■  \-«!&'«!«sm5^v  : 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Univ.    of  Calif, 

Library 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 


Europe  and  the  Faith 


**Sine  ductoritdte  nulla  'vitd** 


BY 


HILAIRE  BELLOC 


FOURTH  PRINTING 


New  York 
THE  PAULIST   PRESS 

401    West   59th    Street 
1930 


Copyright,  1920,  by  "The  Missionary  Society  of 

St.  Paul  the  Apostle  in  the  Statb 

of  New  York  " 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

The  Catholic  Conscience  of  History     .     .     vii 


I 

What  Was  the  Roman  Empire?     ....       1 

II 

What    Was    the    Church    in    the    Roman 

Empire?         21 

III 

What    Was    the    "Fall"    of    the    Roman 

Empire?         ......••.,.     54 

IV 

The  Beginning  of  the  Nations 84 

V 
What  Happened  in  Britain?    .    ,    .    .    .     .115 

V 


vi  CONTENTS 

VI 

PAGB 

The  Dark  Ages 170 

VII 
The  Middle  Ages 190 

VIII 
What  Was  the  Reformation?     .     .     .     .     .  206 

IX 
The  Defection  of  Britain 225 

X  ; 

Conclusion .*•„...  248 


INTRODUCTION 
The  Catholic  Conscience  of  History 

I  SAY  the  Catholic  "conscience"  of  history — I  say 
"conscience" — that  is,  an  intimate  knowledge 
through  identity :  the  intuition  of  a  thing  which  is 
one  with  the  knower — I  do  not  say  "The  Catholic 
Aspect  of  History."  This  talk  of  "aspects"  is  mod- 
ern and  therefore  part  of  a  decline:  it  is  false,  and 
therefore  ephemeral:  I  will  not  stoop  to  it.  I  will 
rather  do  homage  to  truth  and  say  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  Catholic  "aspect"  of  European  his- 
tory. There  is  a  Protestant  aspect,  a  Jewisji 
aspect,  a  Mohammedan  aspect,  a  Japanese  aspect, 
and  so  forth.  For  all  of  these  look  on  Europe 
from  without.  The  Catholic  sees  Europe  from 
within.  There  is  no  more  a  Catholic  "aspect"  of 
European  history  than  there  is  a  man's  "aspect" 
of  himself. 

Sophistry  does  indeed  pretend  that  there  is  even 
a  man's  "aspect"  of  himself.  In  nothing  does 
false  philosophy  prove  itself  more  false.  For  a 
man's  way  of  perceiving  himself  (when  he  does  so 
honestly  and  after  a  cleansing  examination  of  his 
mind)  is  in  line  with  his  Creator's,  and  therefore 
with  reality:  he  sees  from  within. 

Let  me  pursue  this  metaphor.  Man  has  in  him 
conscience,  which  is  the  voice  of  God.  Not  only 
does  he  know  by  this  that  the  outer  world  is  real, 
but  also  that  his  own  personality  is  real. 

When  a  man,  although  flattered  by  the  voice  of 
vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

another,  yet  says  within  himself,  "I  am  a  mean 
fellow,"  he  has  hold  of  reality.  When  a  man, 
though  maligned  of  the  world,  says  to  himself  of 
himself,  "My  purpose  was  just,"  he  has  hold  of 
reality.  He  knows  himself,  for  he  is  himself.  A 
man  does  not  know  an  infinite  amount  about  him- 
self. But  the  finite  amount  he  does  know  is  all 
in  the  map;  it  is  all  part  of  what  is  really  there. 
What  he  does  not  know  about  himself  would,  did 
he  know  it,  fit  in  with  what  he  does  know  about 
himself.  There  are  indeed  "aspects"  of  a  man  for 
all  others  except  these  two,  himself  and  God  Who 
made  him.  These  two,  when  they  regard  him,  see 
him  as  he  is;  all  other  minds  have  their  several 
views  of  him;  and  these  indeed  are  "aspects,"  each 
of  which  is  false,  while  all  differ.  But  a  man's 
view  of  himself  is  not  an  "aspect:"  it  is  a  compre- 
hension. 

Now  then,  so  it  is  with  us  who  are  of  the  Faith 
and  the  great  story  of  Europe.  A  Catholic  as  he 
reads  that  story  does  not  grope  at  it  from  without, 
he  understands  it  from  within.  He  cannot  under- 
stand it  altogether  because  he  is  a  finite  being; 
but  he  is  also  that  which  he  has  to  understand. 
The  Faith  is  Europe  and  Europe  is  the  Faith. 

The  Catholic  brings  to  history  (when  I  say  "his- 
tory" in  these  pages  I  mean  the  history  of  Chris- 
tendom) self-knowledge.  As  a  man  in  the  con- 
fessional accuses  himself  of  what  he  knows  to  be 
true  and  what  other  people  cannot  judge,  so  a 
Catholic,  talking  of  the  united  European  civiliza- 
tion, when  he  blames  it,  blames  it  for  motives  and 
for  acts  which  are  his  own.  He  himself  could 
have  done  those  things  in  person.  He  is  not  rela- 
tively right  in  his  blame,  he  is  absolutely  right. 
As  a  man  can  testify  to  his  own  motive  so  can  the 
Catholic  testify  to  unjust,  irrelevant,  or  ignorant 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

conceptions  of  the  European  story;  for  he  knows 
why  and  how  it  proceeded.  Others,  not  Catholic, 
look  upon  the  story  of  Europe  externally  as 
strangers.  They  have  to  deal  with  something 
which  presents  itself  to  them  partially  and  discon- 
nectedly, by  its  phenomena  alone:  he  sees  it  all 
from  its  centre  in  its  essence,  and  together. 

I  say  again,  renewing  the  terms,  The  Church  is 
Europe:  and  Europe  is  The  Church. 

The  Catholic  conscience  of  history  is  not  a  con- 
science which  begins  with  the  development  of  the 
Church  in  the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean.  It  goes 
back  much  further  than  that.  The  Catholic  under- 
stands the  soil  in  which  that  plant  of  the  Faith 
arose.  In  a  way  that  no  other  man  can,  he  under- 
stands the  Roman  military  effort;  why  that  effort 
clashed  with  the  gross  Asiatic  and  merchant  em- 
pire of  Carthage;  what  we  derived  from  the  light 
of  Athens;  what  food  we  found  in  the  Irish  and 
the  British,  the  Gallic  tribes,  their  dim  but  awful 
memories  of  immortality;  what  cousinship  we 
claim  with  the  ritual  of  false  but  profound  re- 
ligions, and  even  how  ancient  Israel  (the  little  vio- 
lent people,  before  they  got  poisoned,  while  they 
were  yet  National  in  the  mountains  of  Judea) 
was,  in  the  old  dispensation  at  least,  central  and 
(as  we  Catholics  say)  sacred:  devoted  to  a  peculiar 
mission. 

For  the  Catholic  the  whole  perspective  falls  into 
its  proper  order.  The  picture  is  normal.  Noth- 
ing is  distorted  to  him.  The  procession  of  our 
great  story  is  easy,  natural,  and  full.  It  is  also 
final. 

But  the  modern  Catholic,  especially  if  he  is  con- 
fined to  the  use  of  the  English  tongue,  suffers  from 
a  deplorable  (and  it  is  to  be  hoped),  a  passing 
accident.     No  modern  book  in  the  English  tongue 


X  INTRODUCTION 

gives  him  a  conspectus  of  the  past;  he  is  compelled 
to  study  violently  hostile  authorities,  North  Ger- 
man (or  English  copying  North  German),  whose 
knowledge  is  never  that  of  the  true  and  balanced 
European. 

He  comes  perpetually  across  phrases  which  he 
sees  at  once  to  be  absurd,  either  in  their  limita- 
tions or  in  the  contradictions  they  connote.  But 
unless  he  has  the  leisure  for  an  extended  study,  he 
cannot  put  his  fmger  upon  the  precise  mark  of  the 
absurdity.  In  the  books  he  reads — if  they  are  in 
the  English  language  at  least — he  fmds  things  lack- 
ing which  his  instinct  for  Europe  tells  him  should 
be  there;  but  he  cannot  supply  their  place  because 
the  man  who  wrote  those  books  was  himself  ignor- 
ant of  such  things,  or  rather  could  not  conceive 
them. 

I  will  take  two  examples  to  show  what  I  mean. 
The  one  is  the  present  battlefield  of  Europe:  a 
large  affair  not  yet  cleared,  concerning  all  nations 
and  concerning  them  apparently  upon  matters 
quite  indifferent  to  the  Faith.  It  is  a  thing  which 
any  stranger  might  analyze  (one  would  think)  and 
which  yet  no  historian  explains. 

The  second  I  deliberately  choose  as  an  example 
particular  and  narrow:  an  especially  doctrinal 
story.  I  mean  the  story  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canter- 
bury, of  which  the  modern  historian  makes  noth- 
ing but  an  incomprehensible  contradiction;  but 
which  is  to  a  Catholic  a  sharp  revelation  of  the 
half-way  house  between  the  Empire  and  modern 
nationalities. 

As  to  the  first  of  these  two  examples:  Here  is 
at  last  the  Great  War  in  Europe:  clearly  an  issue 
— things  come  to  a  head.  How  came  it?  Why 
these  two  camps?  What  was  this  curious  group- 
ing of  the  West  holding  out  in  desperate  Alliance 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

against  the  hordes  that  Prussia  drove  to  a  victory 
apparently  inevitable  after  the  breakdown  of  the 
Orthodox  Russian  shell?  Where  lay  the  roots  of 
so  singular  a  contempt  for  our  old  order,  chivalry 
and  morals,  as  Berlin  then  displayed?  Who  shall 
explain  the  position  of  the  Papacy,  the  question 
of  Ireland,  the  aloofness  of  old  Spain? 

It  is  all  a  welter  if  we  try  to  order  it  by  modern, 
external — especially  by  any  materialist  or  even 
skeptical — analysig^^  It  was  not  climate  against 
climate — that  facile  materialist  contrast  of  "en- 
vironment," which  is  the  crudest  and  stupidest 
explanation  of  human  affairs.  It  was  not  race — if 
indeed  any  races  can  still  be  distinguished  in  Euro- 
pean blood  save  broad  and  confused  appearances, 
such  as  Easterner  and  Westerner,  short  and  tall, 
dark  and  fair.  It  was  not — as  another  foolish 
academic  theory  (popular  some  years  ago)  would 
pretend — an  economic  affair.  There  was  here  no 
revolt  of  rich  against  poor,  no  pressure  of  unde- 
veloped barbarians  against  developed  lands,  no 
plan  of  exploitation,  nor  of  men  organized,  at- 
tempting to  seize  the  soil  of  less  fruitful 
owners. 

How  came  these  two  opponents  into  being,  the 
potential  antagonism  of  which  was  so  strong  that 
millions  willingly  suffered  their  utmost  for  the 
sake  of  a  decision? 

That  man  who  would  explain  the  tremendous 
judgment  on  the  superficial  test  of  religious  dif- 
ferences among  modern  "sects"  must  be  be- 
wildered indeed!  I  have  seen  the  attempt  made 
in  more  than  one  journal  and  book,  enemy  and 
Allied.     The  results  are  lamentable! 

Prussia  indeed,  the  protagonist,  was  atheist. 
But  her  subject  provinces  supported  her  exultant- 
ly. Catholic  Colo^ne^jipd  the  Rhine  and  tamely 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

Catholic  Bavaria.  Her  main  support — without 
which  she  could  not  have  challenged  Europe — was 
that  very  power  whose  sole  reason  for  being  was 
Catholicism:  the  House  of  Hapsburg-Lorraine 
which,  from  Vienna,  controlled  and  consolidated 
the  Catholic  against  the  Orthodox  Slav:  the  House 
of  Hapsburg-Lorraine  was  the  champion  of  Catho- 
lic organization  in  Eastern  Europe. 

The  Catholic  Irish  largely  stood  apart. 

Spain,  not  devout  at  all,  but  hating  things  not 
Catholic  because  those  things  are  foreign,  was 
more  than  apart.  Britain  had  long  forgotten  the 
unity  of  Europe.  France,  a  protagonist,  was  no- 
toriously divided  within  herself  over  the  religious 
principle  of  that  unity.  No  modern  religious 
analysis  such  as  men  draw  up  who  think  of  re- 
ligion as  opinion  will  make  anything  of  all  this. 
Then  why  was  there  a  fight?  People  who  talk  of 
"Democracy"  as  the  issue  of  the  Great  War  may  be 
neglected :  Democracy — one  noble,  ideal,  but  rare 
and  perilous,  form  of  human  government — was  not 
at  stake.  No  historian  can  talk  thus.  The  essen- 
tially aristocratic  policy  of  England  now  turned  to 
a  plutocracy,  the  despotism  of  Russia  and  Prussia, 
the  immense  complex  of  all  other  great  modern 
states  gives  such  nonsense  the  lie. 

People  who  talk  of  "A  struggle  for  supremacy 
between  the  two  Teutonic  champions  Germany  and 
England"  are  less  respectable  still.  England  is  not 
Teutonic,  and  was  not  protagonist.  The  English 
Cabinet  decided  by  but  the  smallest  possible  ma- 
jority (a  majority  of  one)  to  enter  the  war.  The 
Prussian  Government  never  dreamt  it  would  have 
to  meet  England  at  all.  There  is  no  question  of 
so  single  an  issue.  The  world  was  at  war.  Why? 
No  man  is  an  historian  who  cannot  answer  from 
the  past.     All  who  can  answer  from  the  past,  and 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

are  historians,  see  that  it  is  the  historical  depth 
of  the   European   faith,_ not  its   present   surface, 
which  explains  all. 
""    The  struggle  was  against  Prussia. 

Why "dTd  Prussia  arise?  Because  the  imperfect 
Byzantine  evangelization  of  the  Eastern  Slavonic 
Plains  just  failed  to  meet,  there  in  Prussia,  the 
western  flood  of  living  tradition  welling  up  from 
Rome.  Prussia  was  an  hiatus.  In  that  small  neg- 
lected area  neither  half  cultivated  from  the  Byzan- 
tine East  nor  fully  from  the  Roman  West  rose  a 
strong  garden  of  weeds.  And  weeds  sow  them- 
selves. Prussia,  that  is,  this  patch  of  weeds, 
could  not  extend  until  the  West  weakened  through 
schism.  It  had  to  wait  till  the  battle  of  the  Refor- 
mation died  down.  But  it  waited.  And  at  last, 
when  there  was  opportunity,  it  grew  prodigiously. 
The  weed  patch  over-ran  first  Poland  and  the  Ger- 
manies,  then  naif  Europe.  When  it  challenged 
all  civilization'  at  fast  it  was  master  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty  million  souls. 

What  are  the  tests  of  this  war?  In  their  vastly 
different  fashions  they  are  Poland  and  Ireland — 
the  extreme  islands  of  tenacious  tradition:  the  con- 
servators of  the  Past  through  a  national  passion 
for  the  Faith. 

The  Great  War  was  a  clash  between  an  uneasy 
New  Thing  which  desired  to  live  its  own  distorted 
life  anew  and  separate  from  Europe,  and  the  old 
Christian  rock.  This  New  Thing  is,  in  its  morals, 
in  the  morals  spread  upon  it  by  Prussia,  the  effect 
of  that  great  storm  wherein  three  hundred  years 
ago  Europe  made  shipwreck  and  was  split  into 
two.  This  war  was  the  largest,  yet  no  more  than 
the  recurrent,  example  of  that  unceasing  wrestle: 
the  outer,  the  unstable,  the  untraditional — which  is 
barbarism — pressing  blindly  upon  the  inner,  the 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

traditional,  the  strong — which  is  Ourselves :  which 
is  Christendom:  which  is  Europe. 

Small  wonder  that  the  Cabinet  at  Westminster 
hesitated ! 

We  used  to  say  during  the  war  that  if  Prussia 
conquered  civilization  failed,  but  that  if  the  Allies 
conquered  civilization  was  reestablished — What 
did  we  mean?  We  meant,  not  that  the  New  Bar- 
barians could  not  handle  a  machine:  They  can. 
But  we  meant  that  they  had  learnt  all  from  us. 
We  meant  that  they  cannot  continue  of  themselves; 
and  that  we  can.  We  meant  that  they  have  no 
roots. 

When  we  say  that  Vienna  was  the  tool  of  Ber- 
lin, that  Madrid  should  be  ashamed,  what  do  we 
mean?  It  has  no  meaning  save  that  civilization  is 
one  and  we  its  family:  That  which  challenged 
us,  though  it  controlled  so  much  which  should  have 
aided  us  and  was  really  our  own,  was  external  to 
civilization  and  did  not  lose  that  character  by  the 
momentary  use  of  civilized  Allies. 

When  we  said  that  "the  Slav"  failed  us,  what  did 
we  mean?  It  was  not  a  statement  of  race.  Po- 
land is  Slav,  so  is  Serbia :  they  were  two  vastly  dif- 
fering states  and  yet  both  with  us.  It  meant  that 
the  Byzantine  influence  was  never  sufficient  to  in- 
form a  true  European  state  or  to  teach  Russia  a 
national  discipline;  because  the  Byzantine  Empire, 
the  tutor  of  Russia,  was  cut  off  from  us,  the  Euro- 
peans, the  Catholics,  the  heirs,  who  are  the  con- 
servators of  the  world. 

The  Catholic  Conscience  of  Europe  grasped  this 
war — with  apologies  where  it  was  in  the  train  of 
Prussia,  with  affirmation  where  it  was  free.  It  saw 
what  was  toward.  It  weighed,  judged,  decided 
upon  the  future — the  two  alternative  futures  which 
lie  before  the  world. 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

All  other  judgments  of  the  war  made  nonsense: 
You  had,  on  the  Allied  side,  the  most  vulgar  pro- 
fessional politicians  and  their  rich  paymasters 
shouting  for  "Democracy;"  pedants  mumbling 
about  "Race."  On  the  side  of  Prussia  (the  nega- 
tion of  nationality)  you  have  the  use  of  some  vague 
national  mission  of  conquest  divinely  given  to  the 
very  various  Germans  and  the  least  competent  to 
govern.  You  would  come  at  last  (if  you  listened 
to  such  varied  cries)  to  see  the  Great  War  as  a 
mere  folly,  a  thing  without  motive,  such  as  the 
emptiest  internationals  conceive  the  thing  to  have 
been. 

So  much  for  the  example  of  the  war.  It  is  ex- 
plicable as  a  challenge  to  the  tradition  of  Europe. 
It  is  inexplicable  on  any  other  ground.  The  Catho- 
lic alone  is  in  possession  of  the  tradition  of  Europe: 
he  alone  can  see  and  judge  in  this  matter. 

From  so  recent  and  universal  an  example  I  turn 
to  one  local,  distant,  precise,  in  which  this  same 
Catholic  Conscience  of  European  history  may  be 
tested. 

Consider  the  particular  (and  clerical)  example 
of  TTToihas  a  Becket:  the  story  of  St.  Thomas  of 
Canterbury.  I  defy  any  man  to  read  the  story  of 
Thomas  a  Becket  in  Stubbs,  or  in  Green,  or  in 
Bright,  or  in  any  other  of  our  provincial  Protestant 
handbooks,  and  to  make  head  or  tail  of  it. 

Here  is  a  well-defined  and  limited  subject  of 
study.  It  concerns  only  a  few  years.  A  great 
deal  is  known  about  it,  for  there  are  many  con- 
temporary accounts.  Its  comprehension  is  of  vast 
interest  to  history.  The  Catholic  may  well  ask: 
"How  it  is  I  cannot  understand  the  story  as  told 
by  these  Protestant  writers?  Why  does  it  not 
make  sense?" 

The  story  is  briefly  this:     A  certain  prelate,  the 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

Primate  of  England  at  the  time,  was  asked  to  ad- 
mit certain  changes  in  the  status  of  the  clergy. 
The  chief  of  these  changes  was  that  men  attached 
to  the  Church  in  any  way  even  by  minor  orders 
(not  necessarily  priests)  should,  if  they  committed 
a  crime  amenable  to  temporal  jurisdiction,  be 
brought  before  the  ordinary  courts  of  the  country 
instead  of  left,  as  they  had  been  for  centuries,  to 
their  own  courts.  The  claim  was,  at  the  time,  a 
novel  one.  The  Primate  of  England  resisted  that 
claim.  In  connection  with  his  resistance  he  was 
subjected  to  many  indignities,  many  things  out- 
rageous to  custom  were  done  against  him;  but  the 
Pope  doubted  whether  his  resistance  was  justified, 
and  he  was  finally  reconciled  with  the  civil  author- 
ity. On  returning  to  his  See  at  Canterbury  he  be- 
came at  once  the  author  of  further  action  and  the 
subject  of  further  outrage,  and  within  a  short  time 
he  was  murdered  by  his  exasperated  enemies. 

His  death  raised  a  vast  public  outcry.  His  mon- 
arch did  penance  for  it.  But  all  the  points  on 
which  he  had  resisted  were  in  practice  waived  by 
the  Church  at  last.  The  civil  state's  original  claim 
was  in  practice  recognized  at  last.  Today  it  ap- 
pears to  be  plain  justice.  The  chief  of  St.  Thomas' 
contentions,  for  instance,  that  men  in  orders 
should  be  exempt  from  the  ordinary  courts,  seems 
as  remote  as  chain  armors. 

So  far,  so  good.  The  opponent  of  the  Faith  will 
say,  and  has  said  in  a  hundred  studies — that  this 
resistance  was  nothing  more  than  that  always  of- 
fered by  an  old  organization  to  a  new  develop- 
ment. 

Of  course  it  was!  It  is  equally  true  to  say  of  a 
man  who  objects  to  an  aeroplane  smashing  in  the 
top  of  his  studio  that  it  is  the  resistance  of  an  old 
organization  to  a  new  development.     But  such  a 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

phrase  in  no  way  explains  the  business;  and  when 
the  Catholic  begins  to  examine  the  particular  case 
of  St.  Thomas,  he  finds  a  great  many  things  to 
wonder  at  and  to  think  about,  upon  which  his  less 
European  opponents  are  helpless  and  silent. 

I  say  "helpless"  because  in  their  attitude  they 
give  up  trying  to  explain.  They  record  these 
things,  but  they  are  bewildered  by  them.  They 
can  explain  St.  Thomas'  particular  action  simply 
enough:  too  simply.  He  was  (they  say)  a  man 
living  in  the  past.  But  when  they  are  asked  to 
explain  the  vast  consequences  that  followed  his 
martyrdom,  they  have  to  fall  back  upon  the  most 
inhuman  and  impossible  hypotheses;  that  "the 
masses  were  ignorant" — that  is  as  compared  with 
other  periods  in  human  history  (what,  more  ig- 
norant than  today?)  that  "the  Papacy  engi- 
neered an  outburst  of  popular  enthusiasm."  As 
though  the  Papacy  were  a  secret  society  like  mod- 
ern Freemasonry,  with  some  hidden  machinery  for 
"engineering"  such  things.  As  though  the  type  of 
enthusiasm  produced  by  the  martyrdom  was  the 
wretched  mechanical  thing  produced  now  by  cau- 
cus or  newspaper  "engineering!"  As  though  noth- 
ing besides  such  interferences  was  there  to  arouse 
the  whole  populace  of  Europe  to  such  a  pitch! 

As  to  the  miracles  which  undoubtedly  took  place 
at  St.  Thomas'  tomb,  the  historian  who  hates  or 
ignores  the  Faith  had  (and  has)  three  ways  of 
denying  them.  The  first  is  to  say  nothing  about 
them.  It  is  the  easiest  way  of  telling  a  lie.  The 
second  is  to  say  that  they  were  the  result  of  a  vast 
conspiracy  which  the  priests  directed  and  the 
feeble  acquiescence  of  the  maim,  the  halt  and  the 
blind  supported.  The  third  (and  for  the  moment 
most  popular)  is  to  give  them  modern  journalistic 
names,  sham  Latin  and  Greek  confused,  which,  it 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

is  hoped,  will  get  rid  of  the  miraculous  character; 
notably  do  such  people  talk  of  "auto-suggestion." 

Now  the  Catholic  approaching  this  wonderTul 
story,  when  he  has  read  all  the  original  documents, 
understands  it  easily  enough  from  within. 

He  sees  that  the  stand  made  by  St.  Thomas  was 
not  very  important  in  its  special  claims,  and  was 
probably  (taken  as  an  isolated  action)  unreason- 
able. But  he  soon  gets  to  see,  as  he  reads  and  as 
he  notes  the  rapid  and  profound  transformation  of 
all  civilization  which  was  taking  place  in  that  gen- 
eration, that  St.  Thomas  was  standing  out  for  a 
principle,  ill  clothed  in  his  particular  plea,  but 
absolute  in  its  general  appreciation:  the  freedom 
of  the  Church.  He  stood  out  in  particular  for  what 
had  been  the  concrete  symbols  of  the  Church's  lib- 
erty in  the  past.  The  direction  of  his  actions  was 
everything,  whether  his  symbol  was  well  or  ill 
chosen.  The  particular  customs  might  go.  But  to 
challenge  the  new  claims  of  civil  power  at 
that  moment  was  to  save  the  Church.  A  move- 
ment was  afoot  which  might  have  then  everywhere 
accomplished  what  was  only  accomplished  in  parts 
of  Europe  four  hundred  years  later,  to  wit,  a  dis- 
solution of  the  unity  and  the  discipline  of  Christene- 
dom. 

St.  Thomas  had  to  fight  on  ground  chosen  by 
the  enemy;  he  fought  and  he  resisted  in  the  spirit 
dictated  by  the  Church.  He  fought  for  no  dog- 
matic point,  he  fought  for  no  point  to  which  the 
Church  of  five  hundred  years  earlier  or  five  hun- 
dred years  later  would  have  attached  Importance. 
He  fought  for  things  which  were  purely  temporal 
arrangements;  which  had  indeed  until  quite  re- 
cently been  the  guarantee  of  the  Church's  liberty, 
but  which  were  in  his  time  upon  the  turn  of  be- 
coming   negligible.     But    the   spirit   in    which   he 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

fought  was  a  determination  that  the  Church  should 
never  be  controlled  by  the  civil  power,  and  the 
spirit  against  which  he  fought  was  the  spirit  which 
either  openly  or  secretly  believes  the  Church  to  be 
an  institution  merely  human,  and  therefore  natur- 
ally subjected,  as  an  inferior,  to  the  processes  of 
the  monarch's  (or,  worse,  the  politician's)  law. 

A  Catholic  sees,  as  he  reads  the  story,  that  St. 
Thomas  was  obviously  and  necessarily  to  lose,  in 
the  long  run,  every  concrete  point  on  which  he  had 
stood  out,  and  yet  he  saved  throughout  Europe  the 
ideal  thing  for  which  he  was  standing  out.  A 
Catholic  perceives  clearly  why  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  populace  rose:  the  guarantee  of  the  plain  man's 
healthy  and  moral  existence  against  the  threat  of 
the  wealthy,  and  the  power  of  the  State — the  self- 
government  of  the  general  Church,  had  been  de- 
fended by  a  champion  up  to  the  point  of  death. 
For  the  morals  enforced  by  the  Church  are  the 
guarantee  of  freedom. 

Further  the  Catholic  reader  is  not  content,  as  is 
the  non-Catholic,  with  a  blind,  irrational  assertion 
that  the  miracles  could  not  take  place.  He  is  not 
wholly  possessed  of  a  firm  and  lasting  faith  that 
no  marvelous  events  ever  take  place.  He  reads 
the  evidence.  He  cannot  believe  that  there  was  a 
conspiracy  of  falsehood  (in  the  lack  of  all  proof 
of  such  conspiracy)?  He  is  moved  to  a  conviction 
that  events  so  minutely  recorded  and  so  amply 
testified,  happened.  Here  again  is  the  European, 
the  chiefly  reasonable  man,  the  Catholic,  pitted 
against  the  barbarian  skeptic  with  his  empty,  un- 
proved, mechanical  dogmas  of  material  sequence. 

And  these  miracles,  for  a  Catholic  reader,  are 
but  the  extreme  points  fitting  in  with  the  whole 
scheme.  He  knows  what  European  civilization 
was  before  the  twelfth  century.     He  knows  what  it 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

was  to  become  after  the  sixteenth.  He  knows  why 
and  how  the  Church  would  stand  out  against  a  cer- 
tain itch  for  change.  He  appreciates  why  and  how 
a  character  like  that  of  St.  Thomas  would  resist. 
He  is  in  no  way  perplexed  to  find  that  the  resist- 
ance failed  on  its  technical  side.  He  sees  that  it 
succeeded  so  thoroughly  in  its  spirit  as  to  prevent, 
in  a  moment  when  its  occurrence  would  have  been 
far  more  dangerous  and  general  than  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  the  overturning  of  the  connection 
between  Church  and  State. 

The  enthusiasm  of  the  populace  he  particularly 
comprehends.  He  grasps  the  connection  between 
that  enthusiasm  and  the  miracles  which  attended 
St.  Thomas'  intercession;  not  because  the  miracles 
were  fantasies,  but  because  a  popular  recognition 
of  deserved  sanctity  is  the  later  accompaniment 
and  the  recipient  of  miraculous  power. 

It  is  the  details  of  history  which  require  the 
closest  analysis.  I  have,  therefore,  chosen  a  sig- 
nificant detail  with  which  to  exemplify  my  case. 

Just  as  a  man  who  thoroughly  understands  the 
character  of  the  English  squires  and  of  their  posi- 
tion in  the  English  countrysides  would  have  to  ex- 
plain at  some  length  (and  with  difficulty)  to  a 
foreigner  how  and  why  the  evils  of  the  English 
large  estates  were,  though  evils,  national;  just  as  a 
particular  landlord  case  of  peculiar  complexity  or 
violent  might  afford  him  a  special  test;  so  the  mar- 
tyrdom of  St.  Thomas  makes,  for  the  Catholic  who 
is  viewing  Europe,  a  very  good  example  whereby 
he  can  show  how  well  he  understands  what  is  to 
other  men  not  understandable,  and  how  simple  is 
to  him,  and  how  human,  a  process  which,  to  men 
not  Catholic,  can  only  be  explained  by  the  most 
grotesque  assumptions;  as  that  universal  contem- 
porary testimony  must  be  ignored;  that  men  are 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

ready  to  die  for  things  in  which  they  do  not  be- 
lieve; that  the  philosophy  of  a  society  does  not  per- 
meate that  society;  or  that  a  popular  enthusiasm 
ubiquitous  and  unchallenged,  is  mechanically  pro- 
duced to  the  order  of  some  centre  of  government! 
All  these  absurdities  are  connoted  in  the  non- 
Catholic  view  of  the  great  quarrel,  nor  is  there  any 
but  the  -Catholic  conscience  of  Europe  that 
explains  it. 

The  Catholic  sees  that  the  whole  of  the  a  Becket 
business  was  like  the  struggle  of  a  man  who  is 
fighting  for  his  liberty  and  is  compelled  to  main- 
tain it  (such  being  the  battleground  chosen  by  his 
opponents)  upon  a  privilege  inherited  from  the 
past.  The  non-Catholic  simply  cannot  understand 
it  and  does  not  pretend  to  understand  it. 

Now  let  us  turn  from  this  second  example,  high- 
ly definite  and  limited,  to  a  third  quite  different 
from  either  of  the  other  two  and  the  widest  of  all. 
Let  us  turn  to  the  general  aspect  of  all  European 
history.  We  can  here  make  a  list  of  the  great 
lines  on  which  the  Catholic  can  appreciate  what 
other  men  only  puzzle  at,  and  can  determine  and 
know  those  things  upon  which  other  men  make  no 
more  than  a  guess. 

The  Catholic  Faith  spreads  over  the  Roman 
world,  not  because  the  Jews  were  widely  dispersed, 
but  because  the  intellect  of  antiquity,  and  especial- 
ly the  Roman  intellect,  accepted  it  in  its  maturity. 

The  material  decline  of  the  Empire  is  not  co- 
relative  with,  nor  parallel  to,  the  growth  of  the 
Catholic  Church;  it  is  the  counterpart  of  that 
growth.  You  have  been  told  "Christianity  (a 
word,  by  the  way,  quite  unhistorical)  crept  into 
Rome  as  she  declined,  and  hastened  that  decline." 
That  is  bad  history.  Rather  accept  this  phrase 
and  retain  it :     "The  Faith  is  that_which  Rome  ac- 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

cepted  in  her  maturity;  nor  was  the  Faith  the 
cause  of  her  decline,  but  rather  the  conservator  of 
all  that  could  be  conserved." 

\  There  was  no  strengthening  of  us  by  the  advent 
or  barbaric  blood;  there  was  a  serious  imperilling 
of  civilization  in  its  old  age  by  some  small  (and 
mainly  servile)  infiltration  of  barbaric  blood;  if 
civilization  so  attacked  did  not  permanently  fail 
through  old  age  we  owe  that  happy  rescue  to  the 
Catholic  Faith. 

In  the  next  period — the  Dark  Ages — the  Catholic 
proceeds  to  see  Europe  saved  against  a  universal 
attack  of  the  Mohammedan,  the  Hun,  the  Scandi- 
navian: he  notes  that  the  fierceness  of  the  attack 
was  such  that  anything  save  something  divinely 
instituted  would  have  broken  down.  The  Moham- 
medan came  within  three  days'  march  of  Tours, 
the  Mongol  was  seen  from  the  walls  of  Tournus  on 
the  Saone:  right  in  France.  The  Scandinavian 
savage  poured  into  the  mouths  of  all  the  rivers  of 
Gaul,  and  almost  overwhelmed  the  whole  island  of 
Britain.  There  was  nothing  left  of  Europe  but  a 
central  core. 

Nevertheless  Europe  survived.  In  the  reflores- 
ence  which  followed  that  dark  time — in  the  Middle 
Ages — the  Catholic  notes  not  hypotheses  but  docu- 
ments and  facts;  he  sees  the  Parliaments  arising 
not  from  some  imaginary  "Teutonic"  root — a  fig- 
ment of  the  academies — but  from  the  very  real  and 
present  great  monastic  orders,  in  Spain,  in  Britain, 
in  Gaul — never  outside  the  old  limits  of  Christen- 
dom. He  sees  the  Gothic  architecture  spring  high, 
spontaneous  and  autochthonic,  iirst  in  the  territory 
of  Paris  and  thence  spread  outwards  in  a  ring  to 
the  Scotch  Highlands  and  to  the  Rhine.  He  sees 
the  new  Universities,  a  product  of  the  soul  of 
Europe,  re-awakened — he  sees  the  marvelous  new 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

civilization  of  the  Middle  Ages  rising  as  a  trans- 
formation of  the  old  Roman  society,  a  transforma- 
tion wholly  from  within,  and  motived  by  the  Faith. 

The  trouble,  the  religious  terror,  the  madnesses 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  are  to  him  the  diseases  of 
one  body — Europe — in  need  of  medicine. 

The  medicine  was  too  long  delayed.  There 
comes  the  disruption  of  the  European  body  at  the 
Reformation. 

It  ought  to  be  death;  but  since  the  Church  is  not 
subject  to  mortal  law  it  is  not  death.  Of  those 
populations  which  break  away  from  religion  and 
from  civilization  none  (he  perceives)  were  of  the 
ancient  Roman  stock — save  Britain.  The  Catholic, 
reading  his  history,  watches  in  that  struggle  Eng- 
land: not  the  effect  of  the  struggle  on  the  fringes 
of  Europe,  on  Holland,  North  Germany  and  the 
rest.  He  is  anxious  to  see  whether  Britain  will  fail 
the  mass  of  civilization  in  its  ordeal. 

He  notes  the  keenness  of  the  fight  in  England 
and  its  long  endurance;  how  all  the  forces  of 
wealth — especially  the  old  families  such  as  the 
Howards  and  the  merchants  of  the  City  of  Lon- 
don— are  enlisted  upon  the  treasonable  side;  how 
in  spite  of  this  a  tenacious  tradition  prevents  any 
sudden  transformation  of  the  British  polity  or  its 
sharp  severance  from  the  continuity  of  Europe. 
He  sees  the  whole  of  North  England  rising,  cities 
in  the  South  standing  siege.  Ultimately  he  sees 
the  great  nobles  and  merchants  victorious,  and  the 
people  cut  off,  apparently  forever,  from  the  life  by 
which  they  had  lived,  the  food  upon  which  they 
had  fed. 

Side  by  side  with  all  this  he  notes  that,  next  to 
Britain,  one  land  onlj^  that  was  never  Roman  land, 
by  an  accident  inexplicable  or  miraculous,  pre- 
serves the  Faith,  and,  as  Britain  is  lost,  he  sees 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

side  by  side  with  that  loss  the  preservation  of  Ire- 
land. 

To  the  Catholic  reader  of  history  (though  he  has 
no  Catholic  history  to  read)  there  is  no  danger  of 
the  foolish  bias  against  civilization  which  has 
haunted  so  many  contemporary  writers,  and  which 
has  led  them  to  frame  fantastic  origins  for  institu- 
tions the  growth  of  which  are  as  plain  as  an  his- 
torical fact  can  be.  He  does  not  see  in  the  pirate 
raids  which  desolated  the  eastern  and  south- 
eastern coasts  of  England  in  the  sixth  century  the 
origin  of  the  English  people.  He  perceives  that  the 
success  of  these  small  eastern  settlements  upon  the 
eastern  shores,  and  the  spread  of  their  language 
westward  over  the  island  dated  from  their  accept- 
ance of  Roman  discipline,  organization  and  law, 
from  which  the  majority,  the  Welsh  to  the  West, 
were  cut  off.  He  sees  that  the  ultimate  hegemony 
of  Winchester  over  Britain  all  grew  from  this  early 
picking  up  of  communications  with  the  Continent 
and  the  cutting  off  of  everything  in  this  island  save 
the  South  and  East  from  the  common  life  of 
Europe.  He  knows  that  Christian  parliaments  are 
not  dimly  and  possibly  barbaric,  but  certainly  and 
plainly  monastic  in  their  origin;  he  is  not  sur- 
prised to  learn  that  they  arose  first  in  the  Pyrenean 
valleys  during  the  struggle  against  the  Mohamme- 
dans; he  sees  how  probable  or  necessary  was  such 
an  origin  just  when  the  chief  effort  of  Europe  was 
at  work  in  the  Reconquista. 

In  general,  the  history  of  Europe  and  of  Eng- 
land develops  naturally  before  the  Catholic  reader; 
he  is  not  tempted  to  that  succession  of  theories, 
self-contradicting  and  often  put  forward  for  the 
sake  of  novelty,  which  has  confused  and  warped 
modern  reconstructions  of  the  past.  Above  all,  he 
does   not   commit   the   prime   historical    error   of 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

"reading  history  backwards."  He  does  not  think 
of  the  past  as  a  groping  towards  our  own  perfec- 
tion of  today.  He  has  in  his  own  nature  the  na- 
ture of  its  career:  he  feels  the  fall  and  the  rise: 
the  rhythm  of  a  life  which  is  his  own. 

The  Europeans  are  of  his  flesh.  He  can  con- 
verse with  the  first  century  or  the  fifteenth;  shrines 
are  not  odd  to  him  nor  oracles;  and  if  he  is  the 
supplanter,  he  is  also  the  heir  of  the  gods. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 


What  Was  the  Roman  Empire? 

\  The  history  of  European  civilization  is  the  his- 
tory of  a  certain  political  institution  which  united 
and  expressed  Europe,  and  was  governed  from 
Rome.  This  institution  was  informed  at  its  very 
origin  by  the  growing  influence  of  a  certain  definite 
and  organized  religion:  this  religion  it  ultimately 
accepted  and,  finally,  was  merged  in. 

The  institution — having  accepted  the  religion, 
having  made  of  that  religion  its  official  expression, 
and  having  breathed  that  religion  in  through  every 
part  until  it  became  the  spirit  of  the  whole — was 
slowly  modified,  spiritually  illumined  and  physi- 
cally degraded  by  age.  But  it  did  not  die.  It  was 
revived  by  the  religion  which  had  become  its  new 
soul.     It  re-arose  and  still  lives. 

This  institution  was  first  known  among  men  as 
Republica;  we  call  it  today  "The  Roman  Empire." 
The  Religion  which  informed  and  saved  it  was 
then  called,  still  is  called,  and  will  always  be  called 
"The  Catholic  Church." 

Europe  is  the  Church,  and  the  Church  is  Europe. 

It  is  immaterial  to  the  historical  value  of  this 
historical  truth  whether  it  be  presented  to  a  man 


2  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

who  utterly  rejects  Catholic  dogma  or  to  a  man 
who  believes  everything  the  Church  may  teach.  A 
man  remote  in  distance,  in  time,  or  in  mental  state 
from  the  thing  we  are  about  to  examine  would  per- 
ceive the  reality  of  this  truth  just  as  clearly  as 
would  a  man  who  was  steeped  in  its  spirit  from 
within  and  who  formed  an  intimate  part  of  Chris- 
tian Europe.  The  Oriental  pagan,  the  contempor- 
ary atheist,  some  supposed  student  in  some*  remote 
future,  reading  history  in  some  place  from  which 
the  Catholic  Faith  shall  have  utterly  departed,  and 
to  which  the  habits  and  traditions  of  our  civiliza- 
tion will  therefore  be  wholly  alien,  would  each,  in 
proportion  to  his  science,  grasp  as  clearly  as  it  is 
grasped  today  by  the  Catholic  student  who  is  of 
European  birth,  the  truth  that  Europe  and  the 
Catholic  Church  were  and  are  one  thing.  The  only 
people  who  do  not  grasp  it  (or  do  not  admit  it)  are* 
those  writers  of  history  whose  special,  local,  and 
temporary  business  it  is  to  oppose  the  Catholic 
Church,  or  who  have  a  traditional  bias  against  it. 

These  men  are  numerous,  they  have  formed,  in 
the  Protestant  and  other  anti-Catholic  universities, 
a  whole  school  of  hypothetical  and  unreal  history 
in  which,  though  the  original  workers  are  few, 
their  copyists  are  innumerable:  and  that  school 
of  unreal  history  is  still  dogmatically  taught  in  the 
anti-Catholic  centres  of  Europe  and  of  the  world. 

Now  our  quarrel  with  this  school  should  be, 
not  that  it  is  anti-Catholic — that  concerns  another 
sphere  of  thought — but  that  it  is  unhistorical. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  3 

To  neglect  the  truth  that  the  Roman  Empire 
with  its  institutions  and  its  spirit  was  the  sole 
origin  of  European  civilization;  to  forget  or  to 
diminish  the  truth  that  the  Empire  accepted  in  its 
maturity  a  certain  religion;  to  conceal  the  fact  that 
this  religion  was  not  a  vague  mood,  but  a  deter- 
minate and  highly  organized  corporation;  to  pre- 
sent in  the  first  centuries  some  non-existant 
"Christianity"  in  place  of  the  existant  Church;  to 
suggest  that  the  Faith  was  a  vague  agreement 
among  individual  holders  of  opinions  instead  of 
what  it  historically  was,  the  doctrine  of  a  fixed 
authoritative  institution;  to  fail  to  identify  that 
institution  with  the  institution  still  here  today  and 
still  called  the  Catholic  Church;  to  exaggerate  the 
insignificant  barbaric  influences  which  came  from 
outside  the  Empire  and  did  nothing  to  modify  its 
spirit;  to  pretend  that  the  Empire  or  its  religion 
have  at  any  time  ceased  to  be — that  is,  to  pretend 
that  there  has  ever  been  a  solution  of  continuity 
between  the  past  and  the  present  of  Europe — all 
these  pretensions  are  parts  of  one  historical  false- 
hood. 

In  all  by  which  we  Europeans  differ  from  the 
rest  of  mankind  there  is  nothing  which  was  not 
originally  peculiar  to  the  Roman  Empire,  or  is  not 
demonstrably  derived  from  something  peculiar  to 
it. 

In  material  objects  the  whole  of  our  wheeled 
traffic,  our  building  materials,  brick,  glass,  mortar, 
cut-stone,  our  cooking,  our  staple  food  and  drink; 


4  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

in  forms,  the  arch,  the  column,  the  bridge,  the 
tower,  the  well,  the  road,  the  canal;  in  expression, 
the  alphabet,  the  very  words  of  most  of  our  numer- 
ous dialects  and  polite  languages,  the  order  of  still 
more,  the  logical  sequence  of  our  thought — all 
spring  from  that  one  source.  So  with  implements : 
the  saw,  the  hammer,  the  plane,  the  chisel,  the  file, 
the  spade,  the  plough,  the  rake,  the  sickle,  the  lad- 
der; all  these  we  have  from  that  same  origin.  Of 
our  institutions  it  is  the  same  story.  The  divisions 
and  the  sub-divisions  of  Europe,  the  parish,  the 
county,  the  province,  the  fixed  national  traditions 
with  their  boundaries,  the  emplacement  of  the 
great  European  cities,  the  routes  of  communication 
between  them,  the  universities,  the  Parliaments, 
the  Courts  of  Law,  and  their  jurisprudence,  all 
these  derive  entirely  from  the  old  Roman  Empire, 
our  well-spring. 

It  may  here  be  objected  that  to  connect  so  close- 
ly the  worldly  foundations  of  our  civilization  with 
the  Catholic  or  universal  religion  of  it,  is  to  limit 
the  latter  and  to  make  of  it  a  merely  human  thing. 

The  accusation  would  be  historically  valueless  in 
any  case,  for  in  history  we  are  not  concerned  with 
the  claims  of  the  supernatural,  but  with  a  sequence 
of  proved  events  in  the  natural  order.  But  if  we 
leave  the  province  of  history  and  consider  that  of 
theology,  the  argument  is  equally  baseless.  Every 
manifestation  of  divine  influence  among  men  must 
have  its  human  circumstance  of  place  and  time. 
The  Church  might  have  risen  under  Divine  Provi- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  5 

dence  in  any  spot :  it  did,  as  a  fact,  spring  up  in  the 
high  Greek  tide  of  the  Levant  and  carries  to  this 
day  the  noble  Hellenic  garb.  It  might  have  risen 
at  any  time:  it  did,  as  a  fact,  rise  just  at  the  incep- 
tion of  that  united  Imperial  Roman  system  which 
we  are  about  to  examine.  It  might  have  carried 
for  its  ornaments  and  have  had  for  its  sacred  lan- 
guage the  accoutrements  and  the  speech  of  any 
one  of  the  other  great  civilizations,  living  or  dead: 
of  Assyria,  of  Egypt,  of  Persia,  of  China,  of  the 
Indies.  As  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  the  Church 
was  so  circumstanced  in  its  origin  and  develop- 
ment that  its  external  accoutrement  and  its  lan- 
guage were  those  of  the  Mediterranean,  that  is,  of 
Greece  and  Rome:  of  the  Empire. 

Now  those  who  would  falsify  history  from  a  con- 
scious or  unconscious  bias  against  the  Catholic 
Church,  will  do  so  in  many  ways,  some  of  which 
will  always  prove  contradictory  of  some  others. 
For  truth  is  one,  error  disparate  and  many. 

The  attack  upon  the  Catholic  Church  may  be 
compared  to  the  violent,  continual,  but  inchoate  at- 
tack of  barbarians  upon  some  civilized  fortress; 
such  an  attack  will  proceed  now  from  this  direc- 
tion, now  from  that,  along  any  one  of  the  infinite 
number  of  directions  from  which  a  single  point 
may  be  approached.  Today  there  is  attack  from 
the  North,  tomorrow  an  attack  from  the  South. 
Their  directions  are  flatly  contradictory,  but  the 
contradiction  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  each  is 
directed  against  a  central  and  fixed  opponent. 


6  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

(  Thus,  some  will  exaggerate  the  power  of  the 
Roman  Empire  as  a  pagan  institution;  they  will 
pretend  that  the  Catholic  Church  was  something 
alien  to  that  pagan  thing;  that  the  Empire  was 
great  and  admirable  before  Catholicism  came, 
weak  and  despicable  upon  its  acceptation  of  the 
Creed.  They  will  represent  the  Faith  as  creeping 
like  an  Oriental  disease  into  the  body  of  a  firm 
Western  society  which  it  did  not  so  much  trans- 
form as  liquefy  and  dissolve. 

Others  will  take  the  clean  contrary  line  and 
make  out  a  despicable  Roman  Empire  to  have 
fallen  before  the  advent  of  numerous  and  vigorous 
barbarians  (Germans,  of  course)  possessing  all 
manner  of  splendid  pagan  qualities — which  usual- 
ly turn  out  to  be  nineteenth  century  Protestant 
qualities.  These  are  contrasted  against  the  dis- 
eased Catholic  body  of  the  Roman  Empire  which 
they  are  pictured  as  attacking. 

Others  adopt  a  simpler  manner.  They  treat  the 
Empire  and  its  institutions  as  dead  after  a  cer- 
tain date,  and  discuss  the  rise  of  a  new  society 
without  considering  its  Catholic  and  Imperial 
origins.  Nothing  is  commoner,  for  instance  (in 
English  schools),  than  for  boys  to  be  taught  that 
the  pirate  raids  and  settlements  of  the  fifth  century 
in  this  Island  were  the  "coming  of  the  English," 
and  the  complicated  history  of  Britain  is  simplified 
for  them  into  a  story  of  how  certain  bold  seafaring 
pagans  (full  of  all  the  virtues  we  ascribe  to  our- 
selves today)  first  devastated,  then  occupied,  and 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  7 

at  last,  of  their  sole  genius,  developed  a  land  which 
Roman  civilization  had  proved  inadequate  to  hold. 

There  is,  again,  a  conscious  or  unconscious  error 
(conscious  or  unconscious,  pedantic  or  ignorant, 
according  to  the  degree  of  learning  in  him  who 
propagates  it)  which  treats  of  the  religious  life  of 
Europe  as  though  it  were  something  quite  apart 
from  the  general  development  of  our  civilization. 

There  are  innumerable  text-books  in  which  a 
man  may  read  the  whole  history  of  his  own,  a 
European,  country,  from,  say,  the  fifth  to  the  six- 
teenth century,  and  never  hear  of  the  Blessed 
Sacrament:  which  is  as  though  a  man  were  to 
write  of  England  in  the  nineteenth  century  with- 
out daring  to  speak  of  newspapers  and  limited 
companies.  Warped  by  such  historical  enor- 
mities, the  reader  is  at  a  loss  to  understand  the 
ordinary  motives  of  his  ancestors.  Not  only  do 
the  great  crises  in  the  history  of  the  Church  ob- 
viously escape  him,  but  much  more  do  the  great 
crises  in  civil  history  escape  him. 

To  set  right,  then,  our  general  view  of  history 
it  is  necessary  to  be  ready  with  a  sound  answer  to 
the  prime  question  of  all,  which  is  this:  "What 
was  the  Roman  Empire?" 

If  you  took  an  immigrant  coming  fresh  into  the 
United  States  today  and  let  him  have  a  full  knowl- 
edge of  all  that  had  happened  since  the  Civil  War : 
if  you  gave  him  of  the  Civil  War  itself  a  partial, 
confused  and  very  summary  account:  if  of  all 
that  went  before  it,  right  away  back  to  the  first 


8  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

colonists,  you  were  to  leave  him  either  wholly 
ignorant  or  ludicrously  misinformed  (and  slightly 
informed  at  that),  what  then  could  he  make  of  the 
problems  in  American  Society,  or  how  would  he  be 
equipped  to  understand  the  nation  of  which  he  was 
to  be  a  citizen?  To  give  such  a  man  the  elements 
of  civic  training  you  must  let  him  know  what  the 
Colonies  were,  what  the  War  of  Independence,  and 
what  the  main  institutions  preceding  that  event 
and  created  by  it.  He  would  have  further  to  know 
soundly  the  struggle  between  North  and  South, 
and  the  principles  underlying  that  struggle.  Last- 
ly, and  most  important  of  all,  he  would  have  to  see 
all  this  in  a  correct  perspective. 

So  it  is  with  us  in  the  larger  question  of  that 
general  civilization  which  is  common  to  both 
Americans  and  Europeans,  and  which  in  its  vigor 
has  extended  garrisons,  as  it  were,  into  Asia  and 
Africa.  We  cannot  understand  it  today  unless  we 
understand  what  it  developed  from.  What  was 
the  origin  from  which  we  sprang?  What  was  the 
Roman  Empire? 

The  Roman  Empire  was  a  united  civilization, 
the  prime  characteristic  of  which  was  the  accepta- 
tion, absolute  and  unconditional,  of  one  common 
mode  of  life  by  all  those  who  dwelt  within  its 
boundaries.  It  is  an  idea  very  difficult  for  the 
modern  man  to  seize,  accustomed  as  he  is  to  a 
number  of  sovereign  countries  more  or  less  sharply 
differentiated,  and  each  separately  colored,  as  it 
were,  by  different  customs,  a  different  language. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  9 

and  often  a  different  religion.  Thus  the  modern 
man  sees  France,  French  speaking,  with  an  archi- 
tecture, manners,  laws  of  its  own,  etc.;  he  saw 
(till  yesterday)  North  Germany  under  the  Prussian 
hegemony,  German  speaking,  with  yet  another  set 
of  institutions,  and  so  forth.  When  he  thinks, 
therefore,  of  any  great  conflict  of  opinion,  such  as 
the  discussion  between  aristocracy  and  democracy 
today,  he  thinks  in  terms  of  different  countries. 
Ireland,  for  instance,  is  Democratic,  England  is 
Aristocratic — and  so  forth. 

Again,  the  modern  man  thinks  of  a  community, 
however  united,  as  something  bounded  by,  and  in 
contrast  with,  other  communities.  When  he 
writes  or  thinks  of  France  he  does  not  think  of 
France  only,  but  of  the  points  in  which  France 
contrasts  with  England,  North  Germany,  South 
Germany,  Italy,  etc. 

Now  the  men  living  in  the  Roman  Empire  re- 
garded civic  life  in  a  totally  different  way.  All 
conceivable  antagonisms  (and  they  were  violent) 
were  antagonisms  within  one  State.  No  differen- 
tiation of  State  against  State  was  conceivable  or 
was  attempted. 

From  the  Euphrates  to  the  Scottish  Highlands, 
from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Sahara  and  the  Middle 
Nile,  all  was  one  State. 

The  world  outside  the  Roman  Empire  was,  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Imperial  citizen^  a  sort  of  waste. 
It  was  not  thickly  populated,  it  had  no  appreciable 
arts  or  sciences,   it  was   barbaric.     That  outside 


10  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

waste  of  sparse  and  very  inferior  tribes  was  some- 
thing of  a  menace  upon  the  frontiers,  or,  to  speak 
more  accurately,  something  of  an  irritation.  But 
that  menace  or  irritation  was  never  conceived  of  as 
we  conceive  of  the  menace  of  a  foreign  power.  It 
was  merely  the  trouble  of  preventing  a  fringe  of 
imperfect,  predatory,  and  small  barbaric  com- 
munities outside  the  boundaries  from  doing  harm 
to  a  vast,  rich,  thickly  populated,  and  highly  or- 
ganized State  within. 

The  members  of  these  communities  (principally 
the  Dutch,  Frisian,  Rhenish  and  other  Germanic 
peoples,  but  also  on  the  other  frontiers,  the  nomads 
of  the  desert,  and  in  the  West,  islanders  and  moun- 
taineers, Irish  and  Caledonian)  were  all  tinged  with 
the  great  Empire  on  which  they  bordered.  Its 
trade  permeated  them.  We  find  its  coins  every- 
where. Its  names  for  most  things  became  part  of 
their  speech.  They  thought  in  terms  of  it.  They 
had  a  sort  of  grievance  when  they  were  not  ad- 
mitted to  it.  They  perpetually  begged  for  ad- 
mittance. 

They  wanted  to  deal  with  the  Empire,  to  enjoy 
its  luxury,  now  and  then  to  raid  little  portions  of 
its  frontier  wealth. 

They  never  dreamt  of  "conquest."  On  the  other 
hand  the  Roman  administrator  was  concerned  with 
getting  barbarians  to  settle  in  an  orderly  manner 
on  the  frontier  fields,  so  that  he  could  exploit  their 
labor,  with  coaxing  them  to  serve  as  mercenaries 
in    the    Roman    armies,    or     (when    there    was 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  11 

any  local  conflict)  with  defeating  them  in  local 
battles,  taking  them  prisoners  and  making  them 
slaves. 

I  have  said  that  the  mere  number  of  these  ex- 
terior men  (German,  Caledonian,  Irish,  Slav,  Moor- 
ish, Arab,  etc.)  was  small  compared  with  the  num- 
bers of  civilization,  and,  I  repeat,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  citizens  of  the  Empire,  their  lack  of  culture 
made  them  more  insignificant  still. 

At  only  one  place  did  the  Roman  Empire  have  a 
common  frontier  with  another  civilization,  proper- 
ly so  called.  It  was  a  very  short  frontier,  not  one- 
twentieth  of  the  total  boundaries  of  the  Empire. 
It  was  the  Eastern  or  Persian  frontier,  guarded  by 
spaces  largely  desert.  And  though  a  true  civili- 
zation lay  beyond,  that  civilization  was  never  of 
great  extent  nor  really  powerful.  This  frontier 
was  variously  drawn  at  various  times,  but  corre- 
sponded roughly  to  the  Plains  of  Mesopotamia. 
The  Mediterranean  peoples  of  the  Levant,  from 
Antioch  to  Judea,  were  always  within  that  frontier. 
They  were  Roman.  The  mountain  peoples  of  Per- 
sia were  always  beyond  it.  Nowhere  else  was  there 
any  real  rivalry  or  contact  with  the  foreigner,  and 
even  this  rivalry  and  contact  (though  "The  Per- 
sian War"  is  the  only  serious  foreign  or  equal  war 
in  the  eyes  of  all  the  rulers  from  Julius  Caesar  to 
the  sixth  century)  counted  for  little  in  the  general 
life  of  Rome. 

The  point  cannot  be  too  much  insisted  upon, 
nor  too  often  repeated,  so  strange  is  it  to  our  mod- 


12  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

ern  modes  of  thought,  and  so  essentially  character- 
istic of  the  first  centuries  of  the  Christian  era  and 
the  formative  period  during  which  Christian  civili- 
zation took  its  shape.  Men  lived  as  citizens  of  one 
State  which  they  took  for  granted  and  which  they 
even  regarded  as  eternal.  There  would  be  much 
grumbling  against  the  taxes  and  here  and  there  re- 
volts against  them,  but  never  a  suggestion  that  the 
taxes  should  be  levied  by  any  other  than  imperial 
authority,  or  imposed  in  any  other  than  the  im- 
perial manner.  There  was  plenty  of  conflict  be- 
tween armies  and  individuals  as  to  who  should 
have  the  advantage  of  ruling,  but  never  any  doubt 
as  to  the  type  of  function  which  the  "Emperor" 
filled,  nor  as  to  the  type  of  universally  despotic 
action  which  he  exercised.  There  were  any  num- 
ber of  little  local  liberties  and  customs  which  were 
the  pride  of  the  separate  places  to  which  they  at- 
tached, but  there  was  no  conception  of  such  local 
differences  being  antagonistic  to  the  one  life  of  the 
one  State.  That  State  was,  for  the  men  of  that 
time,  the  World. 

The  complete  unity  of  this  social  system  was  the 
more  striking  from  the  fact  that  it  underlay  not 
only  such  innumerable  local  customs  and  liberties, 
but  an  almost  equal  number  of  philosophic  opin- 
ions, of  religious  practices,  and  of  dialects.  There 
was  not  even  one  current  ofiicial  language  for  the 
educated  thought  of  the  Empire:  there  were  two, 
Greek  and  Latin.  And  in  every  department  of 
human  life  there  co-existed  this  very  large  liberty 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  13 

of  individual  and  local  expression,  coupled  with  a 
complete,  and,  as  it  were,  necessary  unity,  binding 
the  whole  vast  body  together.  Emperor  might  suc- 
ceed Emperor,  in  a  series  of  civil  wars.  Several 
Emperors  might  be  reigning  together.  The  office 
of  Emperor  might  even  be  officially  and  conscious- 
ly held  in  commission  among  four  or  more  men. 
But  the  power  of  the  Emperor  was  always  one 
power,  his  office  one  office,  and  the  system  of  the 
Empire  one  system. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  these  few  pages  to  at- 
tempt a  full  answer  to  the  question  of  how  such  a 
civic  state  of  mind  came  to  be,  but  the  reader  must 
have  some  sketch  of  its  development  if  he  is  to 
grasp  its  nature. 

The  old  Mediterranean  world  out  of  which  the 
Empire  grew  had  consisted  (before  that  Empire 
was  complete — say,  from  an  unknown  most  dis- 
tant past  to  50  B.  C.)  in  two  types  of  society:  there 
stood  in  it  as  rare  exceptions  States,  or  nations  in 
our  modern  sense,  governed  by  a  central  Govern- 
ment, which  controlled  a  large  area,  and  were 
peopled  by  the  inhabitants  of  many  towns  and  vil- 
lages. Of  this  sort  was  ancient  Egypt.  But  there 
were  also,  surrounding  that  inland  sea,  in  such 
great  numbers  as  to  form  the  predominant  type  of 
society,  a  series  of  Cities,  some  of  them  commercial 
ports,  most  of  them  controlling  a  small  area  from 
which  they  drew  their  agricultural  subsistence,  but 
all  of  them  remarkable  for  this,  that  their  citizens 
drew  their  civic  life  from,  felt  patriotism  for,  were 


14  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  soldiers  of,  and  paid  their  taxes  to,  not  a  nation 
in  our  sense  but  a  municipality. 

These  cities  and  the  small  surrounding  terri- 
tories which  they  controlled  (which,  I  repeat,  were 
often  no  more  than  local  agricultural  areas  neces- 
sary for  the  sustenance  of  the  town)  were  essen- 
tially the  sovereign  Powers  of  the  time.  Commun- 
ity of  language,  culture,  and  religion  might,  indeed, 
bind  them  in  associations  more  or  less  strict.  One 
could  talk  of  the  Phoenician  cities,  of  the  Greek 
cities,  and  so  forth.  But  the  individual  City  was 
always  the  unit.  City  made  war  on  City.  The 
City  decided  its  own  customs,  and  was  the  nucleus 
of  religion.  The  God  was  the  God  of  the  city.  A 
rim  of  such  points  encircled  the  eastern  and  cen- 
tral Mediterranean  wherever  it  was  habitable  by 
man.  Even  the  little  oasis  of  the  Cyrenaean  land 
with  sand  on  every  side,  but  habitable,  developed 
its  city  formations.  Even  on  the  western  coasts 
of  the  inland  ocean,  which  received  their  culture 
by  sea  from  the  East,  such  City  States,  though 
more  rare,  dotted  the  littoral  of  Algeria,  Provence 
and  Spain. 

Three  hundred  years  before  Our  Lord  was  born 
this  moral  equilibrium  was  disturbed  by  the  huge 
and  successful  adventure  of  the  Macedonian 
Alexander. 

The  Greek  City  States  had  just  been  swept  under 
the  hegemony  of  Macedon,  when,  in  the  shape  of 
small  but  invincible  armies,  the  common  Greek 
culture  under   Alexander  overwhelmed  the  East. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  15 

Egypt,  the  Levant  littoral  and  much  more,  were 
turned  into  one  Hellenized  (that  is,  "Greecified") 
civilization.  The  separate  cities,  of  course,  sur- 
vived, and  after  Alexander's  death  unity  of  con- 
trol was  lost  in  various  and  fluctuating  dynasties 
derived  from  the  arrangements  and  quarrels  of  his 
generals.  But  the  old  moral  equilibrium  was  gone 
and  the  conception  of  a  general  civilization  had  ap- 
peared. Henceforward  the  Syrian,  the  Jew,  the 
Egyptian  saw  with  Greek  eyes  and  the  Greek 
tongue  was  the  medium  of  all  the  East  for  a  thou- 
sand years.  Hence  are  the  very  earliest  names  of 
Christian  things,  Bishop,  Church,  Priest,  Baptism, 
Christ,  Greek  names.  Hence  all  our  original  docu- 
ments and  prayers  are  Greek  and  shine  with  a 
Greek  light:  nor  are  any  so  essentially  Greek  in 
idea  as  the  four  Catholic  Gospels. 

Meanwhile  in  Italy  one  city,  by  a  series  of  acci- 
dents very  difficult  to  follow  (since  we  have  only 
later  accounts — and  they  are  drawn  from  the 
city's  point  of  view  only),  became  the  chief  of  the 
City  States  in  the  Peninsula.  Some  few  it  had 
conquered  in  war  and  had  subjected  to  taxation 
and  to  the  acceptation  of  its  own  laws;  many  it 
protected  by  a  sort  of  superior  alliance;  with  many 
more  its  position  was  ill  defined  and  perhaps  in 
origin  had  been  a  position  of  allied  equality.  But 
at  any  rate,  a  little  after  the  Alexandrian  Helleni- 
zation  of  the  East  this  city  had  in  a  slower  and  less 
universal  way  begun  to  break  down  the  moral 
equilibrium  of  the  City  States  in  Italy,  and  had  pro- 


16  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

duced  between  the  Apennines  and  the  sea  (and  in 
some  places  beyond  the  Apennines)  a  society  in 
which  the  City  State,  though  of  course  surviving, 
was  no  longer  isolated  or  sovereign,  but  formed 
part  of  a  larger  and  already  definite  scheme.  The 
city  which  had  arrived  at  such  a  position,  and 
which  was  now  the  manifest  capital  of  the  Italian 
scheme,  was  Rome. 

Contemporary  with  the  last  successes  of  this  de- 
velopment in  Italy  went  a  rival  development  very 
different  in  its  nature,  but  bound  to  come  into  con- 
flict with  the  Roman  because  it  also  was  extending. 
This  was  the  commercial  development  of  Carthage. 
Carthage,  a  Phoenician,  that  is,  a  Levantine  and 
Semitic,  colony,  had  its  city  life  like  all  the  rest. 
It  had  shown  neither  the  aptitude  nor  the  desire 
that  Rome  had  shown  for  conquest,  for  alliances, 
and  in  general  for  a  spread  of  its  spirit  and  for  the 
domination  of  its  laws  and  modes  of  thought.  The 
business  of  Carthage  was  to  enrich  itself:  not  in- 
directly as  do  soldiers  (who  achieve  riches  as  but 
one  consequence  of  the  pursuit  of  arms),  but  di- 
rectly, as  do  merchants,  by  using  men  indirectly, 
by  commerce,  and  by  the  exploitation  of  contracts. 

The  Carthaginian  occupied  mining  centres  in 
Spain,  and  harbors  wherever  he  could  find  them, 
especially  in  the  Western  Mediterranean.  He  em- 
ployed mercenary  troops.  He  made  no  attempt  to 
radiate  outward  slowly  step  by  step,  as  does  the 
military  type,  but  true  to  the  type  of  every  com- 
mercial empire,  from  his  own  time  to  our  own. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  17 

the  Carthaginian  built  up  a  scattered  hotchpotch 
of  dominion,  bound  together  by  what  is  today 
called  the  "Command  of  the  Sea." 

That  command  was  long  absolute  and  Car- 
thaginian power  depended  on  it  wholly.  But  such 
a  power  could  not  co-exist  with  the  growing 
strength  of  martial  Italy.  Rome  challenged  Car- 
thage; and  after  a  prodigious  struggle,  which 
lasted  to  within  two  hundred  years  of  the  birth  of 
Our  Lord,  ruined  the  Carthaginian  power.  Fifty 
years  later  the  town  itself  was  destroyed  by  the 
Romans,  and  its  territory  turned  into  a  Roman 
province.  So  perished  for  many  hundred  years 
the  dangerous  illusion  that  the  merchant  can  mas- 
ter the  soldier.  But  never  had  that  illusion 
seemed  nearer  to  the  truth  than  at  certain  mo- 
ments in  the  duel  between  Carthage  and  Rome. 

The  main  consequence  of  this  success  was  that, 
by  the  nature  of  the  struggle,  the  Western  Medi- 
terranean, with  all  its  City  States,  with  its  half- 
civilized  Iberian  peoples,  lying  on  the  plateau  of 
Spain  behind  the  cities  of  the  littoral,  the  corre- 
sponding belt  of  Southern  France,  and  the  culti- 
vated land  of  Northern  Africa,  fell  into  the  Roman 
system,  and  became,  but  in  a  more  united  way, 
what  Italy  had  already  long  before  become.  The 
Roman  power,  or,  if  the  term  be  preferred,  the  Ro- 
man confederation,  with  its  ideas  of  law  and  gov- 
ernment, was  supreme  in  the  Western  Mediter- 
ranean and  was  compelled  by  its  geographical  posi- 
tion to  extend  itself  inland  further  and  further  into 


18  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Spain,  and  even  (what  was  to  be  of  prodigious 
consequence  to  the  world)  into  Gaul. 

But  before  speaking  of  the  Roman  incorporation 
of  Gaul  we  must  notice  that  in  the  hundred  years 
after  the  final  fall  of  Carthage,  the  Eastern  Medi- 
terranean had  also  begun  to  come  into  line.  This 
Western  power,  the  Roman,  thus  finally  estab- 
lished, occupied  Corinth  in  the  same  decade  as  that 
which  saw  the  final  destruction  of  Carthage,  and 
what  had  once  been  Greece  became  a  Roman  prov- 
ince. All  the  Alexandrian  or  Grecian  East — Syria, 
Egypt — followed.  The  Macedonian  power  in  its 
provinces  came  to  depend  upon  the  Roman  system 
in  a  series  of  protectorates,  annexations,  and  occu- 
pations, which  two  generations  or  so  before  the 
foundation  of  the  Catholic  Church  had  made  Rome, 
though  her  system  was  not  yet  complete,  the  centre 
of  the  whole  Mediterranean  world.  The  men 
whose  sons  lived  to  be  contemporary  with  the  Na- 
tivity saw  that  the  unity  of  that  world  was  already 
achieved.  The  World  was  now  one,  and  was  built 
up  of  the  islands,  the  peninsulas,  and  the  littoral 
of  the  Inland  Sea. 

So  the  Empire  might  have  remained,  and  so  one 
would  think  it  naturally  would  have  remained,  a 
Mediterranean  thing,  but  for  that  capital  experi- 
ment which  has  determined  all  future  history — 
Julius  Caesar's  conquest  of  Gaul — Gaul,  the  mass  of 
which  lay  North,  Continental,  exterior  to  the  Medi- 
terranean :  Gaul  which  linked  up  with  the  Atlantic 
and  the  North  Sea:     Gaul  which  lived  by  the  tides: 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  IQ 

Gaul  which  was  to  be  the  foundation  of  things  to 
come. 

It  was  this  experiment — the  Roman  Conquest  of 
Gaul — and  its  success  which  opened  the  ancient 
and  immemorial  culture  of  the  Mediterranean  to 
the  world.  It  was  a  revolution  which  for  rapidity 
and  completeness  has  no  parallel.  Something  less 
than  a  hundred  small  Celtic  States,  partially  civil- 
ized (but  that  in  no  degree  comparable  to  the  high 
life  of  the  Mediterranean),  were  occupied,  taught, 
and,  as  it  were,  "converted"  into  citizens  of  this 
now  united  Roman  civilization. 

It  was  all  done,  so  to  speak,  within  the  lifetime 
of  a  man.  The  link  and  corner-stone  of  Western 
Europe,  the  quadrilateral  which  lies  between  the 
Pyrenees  and  the  Rhine,  between  the  Mediter- 
ranean, the  Atlantic,  and  the  Channel,  accepted 
civilization  in  a  manner  so  final  and  so  immediate 
that  no  historian  has  ever  quite  been  able  to  explain 
the  phenomenon.  Gaul  accepted  almost  at  once 
the  Roman  language,  the  Roman  food,  the  Roman 
dress,  and  it  formed  the  first— and  a  gigantic — ex- 
tension of  European  culture. 

We  shall  later  find  Gaul  providing  the  perma- 
nent and  enduring  example  of  that  culture  which 
survived  when  the  Roman  system  fell  into  decay. 
Gaul  led  to  Britain.  The  Iberian  Peninsula,  after 
the  hardest  struggle  which  any  territory  had  pre- 
sented, was  also  incorporated.  By  the  close  of  the 
first  century  after  the  Incarnation,  when  the  Catho- 
lic Church  had  already  been  obscurely  founded  in 


20  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

many  a  city,  and  the  turn  of  the  world's  history 
had  come,  the  Roman  Empire  was  finally  estab- 
lished in  its  entirety.  By  that  time,  from  the 
Syrian  Desert  to  the  Atlantic,  from  the  Sahara  to 
the  Irish  Sea  and  to  the  Scotch  hills,  to  the  Rhine 
and  the  Danube,  in  one  great  ring  fence,  there  lay 
a  secure  and  unquestioned  method  of  living  in- 
corporated as  one  great  State. 

\This  State  was  to  be  the  soil  in  which  the  seed 
of  the  Church  was  to  be  sown.  As  the  religion  of 
this  State  the  Catholic  Church  was  to  develop. 
This  State  is  still  present,  underljdng  our  appa- 
rently complex  political  arrangements,  as  the  main 
rocks  of  a  country  underlie  the  drift  of  the  sur- 
face. Its  institutions  of  property  and  of  marriage; 
its  conceptions^  of  law;  its  literary  roots  of 
Rhetoric,  of  Poetry,  of  Logic,  are  still  the  stuff  of 
Europe.  The  religion  which  it  made  as  universal 
as  itself  is  still,  and  perhaps  more  notably  than 
ever,  aooarent  to  all.* 


II 

What  Was  the  Church  in  the  Roman  Empire? 


So  far  I  have  attempted  to  answer  the  question, 
"What  Was  the  Roman  Empire?"  We  have  seen 
that  it  was  an  institution  of  such  and  such  a  char- 
acter, but  to  this  we  had  to  add  that  it  was  an  insti- 
tutiofi  affected  from  its  origin,  and  at  last  per- 
meated by,  another  institution.  This  other  institu- 
tion had  (and  has)  for  its  name  "The  Catholic 
Church." 

My  next  lask  must,  therefore,  be  an  attempt  to 
answer  the  question,  "What  was  the  Church  in 
the  Roman  Empire?"  for  that  I  have  not  yet 
touched. 

In  order  to  answer  this  question  we  shall  do  well 
to  put  ourselves  in  the  place  of  a  man  living  in  a 
particular  period,  from  whose  standpoint  the  na- 
ture of  the  connection  between  the  Church  and  the 
Empire  can  best  be  observed.  And  that  stand- 
point in  time  is  the  generation  which  lived  through 
the  close  of  the  second  century  and  on  into  the 
latter  half  of  the  third  century:  say  from  A.  D. 
190  to  A.  D.  270.  It  is  the  first  moment  in  which 
we  can  perceive  the  Church  as  a  developed  organ- 
ism now  apparent  to  all. 

21 


22  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

If  we  take  an  earlier  date  we  find  ourselves  in  a 
world  where  the  growing  Church  was  still  but 
slightly  known  and  by  most  people  unheard  of. 
We  can  get  no  earlier  view  of  it  as  part  of  the  soci- 
ety around  it.  It  is  from  about  this  time  also  that 
many  documents  survive.  I  shall  show  that  the 
appearance  of  the  Church  at  this  time,  from  one 
hundred  and  fifty  to  two  hundred  and  forty  years 
after  the  Crucifixion,  is  ample  evidence  of  her 
original  constitution. 

A  man  born  shortly  after  the  reign  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  living  through  the  violent  civil  wars  that 
succeeded  the  peace  of  the  Antonines,  surviving 
to  witness  the  Decian  persecution  of  the  Church 
and  in  extreme  old  age  to  perceive  the  promise, 
though  not  the  establishment,  of  an  untrammelled 
Catholicism  (it  had  yet  to  pass  through  the  last 
and  most  terrible  of  the  persecutions),  would  have 
been  able  to  answer  our  question  well.  He  would 
have  lived  at  the  turn  of  the  tide:  a  witness  to  the 
emergence,  apparent  to  all  Society,  of  the  Catholic 
Church. 

Let  us  suppose  him  the  head  of  a  Senatorial 
family  in  some  great  provincial  town  such  as 
Lyons.  He  would  then  find  himself  one  of  a  com- 
paratively small  class  of  very  wealthy  men  to 
whom  was  confined  the  municipal  government  of 
the  city.  Beneath  him  he  would  be  accustomed  to 
a  large  class  of  citizens,  free  men  but  not  sena- 
torial; beneath  these  again  his  society  reposed 
upon  a  very  large  body  of  slaves. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  23 

In  what  proportion  these  three  classes  of  soci- 
ety would  have  been  found  in  a  town  like  Lyons 
in  the  second  century  we  have  no  exact  documents 
to  tell  us,  but  we  may  infer  from  what  we  know  of 
that  society  that  the  majority  would  certainly  have 
been  of  the  servile  class,  free  men  less  numerous, 
while  senators  were  certainly  a  very  small  body 
(they  were  the  great  landowners  of  the  neighbor- 
hood) ;  and  we  must  add  to  these  three  main  divi- 
sions two  other  classes  which  complicate  our  view 
of  that  society.  The  first  was  that  of  the  freed 
men,  the  second  was  made  up  of  perpetual  ten- 
ants, nominally  free,  but  economically  (and  al- 
ready partly  in  legal  theory)  bound  to  the  wealthier 
classes. 

The  freed  men  had  risen  from  the  servile  class 
by  the  sole  act  of  their  masters.  They  were  bound 
to  these  masters  very  strongly  so  far  as  social 
atmosphere  went,  and  to  no  small  extent  in  legal 
theory  as  well.  This  preponderance  of  a  small 
wealthy  class  we  must  not  look  upon  as  a  station- 
ary phenomenon:  it  was  increasing.  In  another 
half-dozen  generations  it  was  destined  to  form  the 
outstanding  feature  of  all  imperial  society.  In  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries  when  the  Roman  Empire 
became  from  Pagan,  Christian,  the  mark  of  the 
world  was  the  possession  of  nearly  all  its  soil  and 
capital  (apart  from  public  land)  by  one  small  body 
of  immensely  wealthy  men:  the  product  of  the 
pagan  Empire. 

It  is  next  important  to  remember  that  such  a 


24  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

man  as  we  are  conceiving  would  never  have  re- 
garded the  legal  distinctions  between  slave  and 
free  as  a  line  of  cleavage  between  different  kinds 
of  men.  It  was  a  social  arrangement  and  no  more. 
Most  of  the  slaves  were,  indeed,  still  chattel,  bought 
and  sold;  many  of  them  were  incapable  of  any  true 
family  life.  But  there  was  nothing  uncommon  in 
a  slave  being  treated  as  a  friend,  in  his  being  a 
member  of  the  liberal  professions,  in  his  acting  as 
a  tutor,  as  an  administrator  of  his  master's  fortune, 
or  a  doctor.  Certain  official  things  he  could  not 
be;  he  could  not  hold  any  public  office,  of  course; 
he  could  never  plead;  and  he  could  not  be  a  sol- 
dier. 

This  last  point  is  essential;  because  the  Roman 
Empire,  though  it  required  no  large  armed  force 
in  comparison  with  the  total  numbers  of  its  vast 
population  (for  it  was  not  a  system  of  mere  re- 
pression— no  such  system  has  ever  endured),  yet 
could  only  draw  that  armed  force  from  a  re- 
stricted portion  of  the  population.  In  the  absence 
of  foreign  adventure  or  Civil  Wars,  the  armies 
were  mainly  used  as  frontier  police.  Yet,  small 
as  they  were,  it  was  not  easy  to  obtain  the  recruit- 
ment required.  The  wealthy  citizen  we  are  con- 
sidering would  have  been  expected  to  "find"  a  cer- 
tain number  of  recruits  for  the  service  of  the  army. 
He  found  them  among  his  bound  free  tenants  and 
enfranchised  slaves;  he  was  increasingly  reluctant 
to  find  them;  and  they  were  increasingly  reluctant 
to  serve.    Later  recruitment  was  found  more  and 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  25 

more  from  the  barbarians  outside  the  Empire;  and 
we  shall  see  on  a  subsequent  page  how  this  af- 
fected the  transition  from  the  ancient  world  to  that 
of  the  Dark  Ages. 

Let  us  imagine  such  a  man  going  through  the 
streets  of  Lyons  of  a  morning  to  attend  a  meeting 
of  the  Curia.  He  would  salute,  and  be  saluted, 
as  he  passed,  by  many  men  of  the  various  classes 
I  have  described.  Some,  though  slaves,  he  would 
greet  familiarly;  others,  though  nominally  free 
and  belonging  to  his  own  following  or  to  that  of 
some  friend,  he  would  regard  with  less  attention. 
He  would  be  accompanied,  it  may  be  presumed, 
by  a  small  retinue,  some  of  whom  might  be  freed 
men  of  his  own,  some  slaves,  some  of  the  tenant 
class,  some  in  legal  theory  quite  independent  of 
him,  and  yet  by  the  economic  necessities  of  the 
moment  practically  his  dependents. 

As  he  passes  through  the  streets  he  notes  the 
temples  dedicated  to  a  variety  of  services.  No 
creed  dominated  the  city;  even  the  local  gods  were 
now  but  a  confused  memory;  a  religious  ritual  of 
the  official  type  was  to  greet  him  upon  his  entry  to 
the  Assembly,  but  in  the  public  life  of  the  city  no 
fixed  philosophy,  no  general  faith,  appeared. 

Among  the  many  buildings  so  dedicated,  two 
perhaps  would  have  struck  his  attention:  the  one 
the  great  and  showy  synagogue  where  the  local 
Jews  met  upon  their  Sabbath,  the  other  a  small 
Christian  Church.  The  first  of  these  he  would 
look  on  as  one  looks  today  upon  the  mark  of  an 


26  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

alien  colony  in  some  great  modern  city.  He  knew 
it  to  be  the  symbol  of  a  small,  reserved,  unsym- 
pathetic but  wealthy  race  scattered  throughout  the 
Empire.  The  Empire  had  had  trouble  with  it  in 
the  past,  but  that  trouble  was  long  forgotten;  the 
little  colonies  of  Jews  had  become  negotiators, 
highly  separate  from  their  fellow  citizens,  already 
unpopular,  but  nothing  more. 

With  the  Christian  Church  it  would  be  other- 
wise. He  would  know  as  an  administrator  (we 
will  suppose  him  a  pagan)  that  this  Church  was 
endowed;  that  it  was  possessed  of  property  more 
or  less  legally  guaranteed.  It  had  a  very  definite 
position  of  its  own  among  the  congregations  and 
corporations  of  the  city,  peculiar,  and  yet  well  se- 
cured. He  would  further  know  as  an  adminis- 
trator (and  this  would  more  concern  him — for  the 
possession  of  property  by  so  important  a  body 
would  seem  natural  enough),  that  to  this  build- 
ing and  the  corporation  of  which  it  was  a  symbol 
were  attached  an  appreciable  number  of  his  fellow 
citizens;  a  small  minority,  of  course,  in  any  town 
of  such  a  date  (the  first  generation  of  the  third 
century),  but  a  minority  most  appreoiable  and 
most  worthy  of  his  concern  from  three  very  defi- 
nite characteristics.  In  the  first  place  it  was 
certainly  growing;  in  the  second  place  it  was 
certainly,  even  after  so  many  generations  of 
growth,  a  phenomenon  perpetually  novel;  in 
the  third  place  (and  this  was  the  capital  point)  it 
represented   a   true   political  organism — the   only 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  27 

subsidiary  organism  which  had  risen  within  the 
general  body  of  the  Empire. 

If  the  reader  will  retain  no  other  one  of  the 
points  I  am  making  in  this  description,  let  him 
retain  this  point :  it  is,  from  the  historical  point  of 
view,  the  explanation  of  all  that  was  to  follow. 
The  Catholic  Church  in  Lyons  would  have  been 
for  that  Senator  a  distinct  organism;  with  its  own 
officers,  its  own  peculiar  spirit,  its  own  type  of 
vitality,  which,  if  he  were  a  wise  man,  he  would 
know  was  certain  to  endure  and  to  grow,  and 
which  even  if  he  were  but  a  superficial  and  un- 
intelligent spectator,  he  would  recognize  as  unique. 

Like  a  sort  of  little  State  the  Catholic  Church 
included  all  classes  and  kinds  of  men,  and  like  the 
Empire  itself,  within  which  it  was  growing,  it  re- 
garded all  classes  of  its  own  members  as  subject 
to  it  within  its  own  sphere.  The  senator,  the  ten- 
ant, the  freed  man,  the  slave,  the  soldier,  in  so  far 
as  they  were  members  of  this  corporation,  were 
equally  bound  to  certain  observances.  Did  they 
neglect  these  observances,  the  corporation  would 
expel  them  or  subject  them  to  penalties  of  its  own. 
He  knew  that  though  misunderstandings  and 
fables  existed  with  regard  to  this  body,  there  was 
no  social  class  in  which  its  members  had  not 
propagated  a  knowledge  of  its  customs.  He  knew 
(and  it  would  disturb  him  to  know)  that  its  organi- 
zation, though  in  no  way  admitted  by  law,  and 
purely  what  we  should  call  "voluntary,"  was  strict 
and  very  formidable. 


28  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

I  Here  in  Lj^ons  as  elsewhere,  it  was  under  a  mon- 
archical head  called  by  the  Greek  name  of  Epis- 
copos,  Greek  was  a  language  which  the  cultured 
knew  and  used  throughout  the  western  or  Latin 
part  of  the  Empire  to  which  he  belonged;  the  title 
would  not,  therefore,  seem  to  him  alien  any  more 
than  would  be  the  Greek  title  of  Presbyter — the 
name  of  the  official  priests  acting  under  this  mon- 
archical head  of  the  organization — or  than  would 
the  Greek  title  Diaconos,  which  title*  was  at- 
tached to  an  order,  just  below  the  priests,  which 
was  comprised  of  the  inferior  officials  of  the  cleri- 
cal body. 

He  knew  that  this  particular  cult,  like  the  in- 
numerable others  that  were  represented  by  the 
various  sacred  buildings  of  the  city,  had  its  mys- 
teries, its  solemn  ritual,  and  so  forth,  in  which 
these,  the  officials  of  its  body,  might  alone  engage, 
and  which  the  mass  of  the  local  "Christians" — for 
such  was  their  popular  name — attended  as  a  con- 
gregation. But  he  would  further  know  that  this 
scheme  of  worship  differed  wholly  from  any  other 
of  the  many  observances  round  it  by  a  certain  fix- 
ity of  definition.  The  Catholic  Church  was  not  an 
opinion,  nor  a  fashion,  nor  a  philosophy;  it  was 
not  a  theory  nor  a  habit;  it  was  a  clearly  delineated 
body  corporate  based  on  numerous  exact  doctrines, 
extremely  jealous  of  its  unity  and  of  its 
precise  definitions,  and  filled,  as  was  no  other 
body  of  men  at  that  time,  with  passionate 
conviction. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  29 

By  this  I  do  not  mean  that  the  Senator  so  walk- 
ing to  his  official  duties  could  not  have  recalled 
from  among  his  own  friends  more  than  one  who 
was  attached  to  the  Christian  body  in  a  negligent 
sort  of  way,  perhaps  by  the  influence  of  his  wife, 
perhaps  by  a  tradition  inherited  from  his  father: 
he  would  guess,  and  justly  guess,  that  this  rapidly 
growing  body  counted  very  many  members  who 
were  indifferent  and  some,  perhaps,  who  were 
ignorant  of  its  full  doctrine.  But  the  body  as  a 
whole,  in  its  general  spirit,  and  especially  in  the 
disciplined  organization  of  its  hierarchy,  did  differ 
from  everything  round  it  in  this  double  character 
of  precision  and  conviction.  There  was  no  certi- 
tude left  and  no  definite  spirit  or  mental  aim,  no 
"dogma"  (as  we  should  say  today)  taken  for 
granted  in  the  Lyons  of  his  time,  save  among  the 
Christians. 

The  pagan  masses  were  attached,  without  defi- 
nite religion,  to  a  number  of  customs.  In  social 
morals  they  were  guided  by  certain  institutions,  at 
the  foundation  of  which  were  the  Roman  ideas  of 
property  in  men,  land  and  goods;  patriotism,  the 
bond  of  smaller  societies,  had  long  ago  merged  in 
the  conception  of  a  universal  empire.  This  Chris- 
tian Church  alone  represented  a  complete  theory 
of  life,  to  which  men  were  attached,  as  they  had 
hundreds  of  years  before  been  attached  to  their 
local  city,  with  its  local  gods  and  intense  corporate 
local  life. 

Without  any  doubt  the  presence  of  that  Church 


30  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

and  of  what  it  stood  for  would  have  concerned  our 
Senator.  It  was  no  longer  negligible  nor  a  thing 
to  be  only  occasionally  observed.  It  was  a  perma- 
nent force  and,  what  is  more,  a  State  wuthin  the 
State. 

If  he  were  like  most  of  his  kind  in  that  genera- 
tion the  Catholic  Church  would  have  affected  him 
as  an  irritant;  its  existence  interfered  with  the 
general  routine  of  public  affairs.  If  he  were,  as  a 
small  minority  even  of  the  rich  already  were,  in 
sympathy  with  it  though  not  of  it,  it  would  still 
have  concerned  him.  It  was  the  only  exceptional 
organism  of  his  uniform  time:  and  it  was  growing. 

This  Senator  goes  into  the  Curia.  He  deals  with 
the  business  of  the  day.  It  includes  complaints 
upon  certain  assessments  of  the  Imperial  taxes. 
He  consults  the  lists  and  sees  there  (it  was  the 
fundamental  conception  of  the  whole  of  that  soci- 
ety) men  drawn  up  in  grades  of  importance  exact- 
ly corresponding  to  the  amount  of  freehold  land 
which  each  possessed.  He  has  to  vote,  perhaps, 
upon  some  question  of  local  repairs,  the  making  of 
some  new  street,  or  the  establishment  of  some 
monument.  Probably  he  hears  of  some  local 
quarrel  provoked  (he  is  told)  by  the  small,  segre- 
gated Christian  body,  and  he  follows  the  police  re- 
port upon  it. 

He  leaves  the  Curia  for  his  own  business  and 
hears  at  home  the  accounts  of  his  many  farms, 
what  deaths  of  slaves  there  have  been,  what  has 
been  the  result  of  the  harvest,  what  purchases  of 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  31 

slaves  or  goods  have  been  made,  what  difficulty 
there  has  been  in  recruiting  among  his  tenantry 
for  the  army,  and  so  forth.  Such  a  man  was  con- 
cerned one  way  or  another  with  perhaps  a  dozen 
large  farming  centres  or  villages,  and  had  some 
thousands  of  human  beings  dependent  upon  him. 
\  In  this  domestic  business  he  hardly  comes  across 
^he  Church  at  all.  It  was  still  in  the  towns.  It 
was  not  yet  rooted  in  the  countryside. 

There  might  possibly,  even  at  that  distance  from 
the  frontiers,  be  rumors  of  some  little  incursion  or 
other  of  barbarians;  perhaps  a  few  hundred  fight- 
ing men,  come  from  the  outer  Germanics,  had 
taken  refuge  with  a  Roman  garrison  after  suffer- 
ing defeat  at  the  hands  of  neighboring  barbarians; 
or  perhaps  they  were  attempting  to  live  by  pillage- 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  garrison  and  the  sol- 
diers had  been  called  out  against  them.  He  might 
have,  from  the  hands  of  a  friend  in  that  garrison, 
a  letter  brought  to  him  officially  by  the  imperial 
post,  which  was  organized  along  all  the  great  high- 
ways, telling  him  what  had  been  done  to  the 
marauders  or  the  suppliants;  how,  too,  some  had, 
after  capture,  been  allotted  land  to  till  under  con- 
ditions nearly  servile,  others,  perhaps,  forcibly  re- 
cruited for  the  army.  The  news  would  never  for 
a  moment  have  suggested  to  him  any  coming  dan- 
ger to  the  society  in  which  he  lived. 

He  would  have  passed  from  such  affairs  to  rec- 
reations probably  literary,  and  there  would  have 
been  an  end  of  his  day. 


32  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

In  such  a  day  what  we  note  as  most  exceptional 
is  the  aspect  of  the  small  Catholic  body  in  a  then 
pagan  city,  and  we  should  remember,  if  we  are  to 
understand  history,  that  by  this  time  it  was  already 
the  phenomenon  which  contemporaries  were  also 
beginning  to  note  most  carefully. 

That  is  a  fair  presentment  of  the  manner  in 
which  a  number  of  local  affairs  (including  the 
Catholic  Church  in  his  city)  would  have  struck 
such  a  man  at  such  a  time. 

If  we  use  our  knowledge  to  consider  the  Empire 
as  a  whole,  we  must  observe  certain  other  things 
in  the  landscape,  touching  the  Church  and  the 
society  around  it,  which  a  local  view  cannot  give 
us.  In  the  first  place  there  had  been  in  that  soci- 
ety from  time  to  time  acute  spasmodic  friction 
breaking  out  between  the  Imperial  power  and  this 
separate  voluntary  organism,  the  Catholic  Church. 
The  Church's  partial  secrecy,  its  high  vitality,  its 
claim  to  independent  administration,  were  the 
superficial  causes  of  this.  Speaking  as  Catholics, 
we  know  that  the  ultimate  causes  were  more  pro- 
found. The  conflict  was  a  conflict  between  Jesus 
Christ  with  His  great  foundation  on  the  one  hand, 
and  what  Jesus  Christ  Himself  had  called  "the 
world."  But  it  is  unhistorical  to  think  of  a 
"Pagan"  world  opposed  to  a  "Christian"  world  at 
that  time.  The  very  conception  of  "a  Pagan 
world"  requires  some  external  manifest  Christian 
civilization  against  which  to  contrast  it.  There 
was  none  such,  of  course,  for  Rome  in  the  first 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  33 

generation  of  the  third  century.  The  Church  had 
around  her  a  society  in  which  education  was  very 
widely  spread,  intellectual  curiosity  very  lively,  a 
society  largely  skeptical,  but  interested  to  discover 
the  right  conduct  of  human  life,  and  tasting  now 
this  opinion,  now  that,  to  see  if  it  could  discover 
a  final  solution. 

It  was  a  society  of  such  individual  freedom  that 
it  is  difficult  to  speak  of  its  "luxury"  or  its 
"cruelty."  A  cruel  man  could  be  cruel  in  it  with- 
out suffering  the  punishment  which  centuries  of 
Christian  training  would  render  natural  to  our 
ideas.  But  a  merciful  man  could  be,  and  would 
be,  merciful  and  would  preach  mercy,  and  would 
be  generally  applauded.  It  was  a  society  in  which 
there  were  many  ascetics — whole  schools  of 
thought  contemptuous  of  sensual  pleasure — but  a 
society  distinguished  from  the  Christian  particu- 
larly in  this,  that  at  bottom  it  believed  man  to  be 
sufficient  to  himself  and  all  belief  to  be  mere 
opinions. 

Here  was  the  great  antithesis  between  the 
Church  and  her  surroundings.  It  is  an  antithesis 
which  has  been  revived  today.  Today,  outside  the 
Catholic  Church,  there  is  no  distinction  between 
opinion  and  faith  nor  any  idea  that  man  is  other 
than  sufficient  to  himself. 

The  Church  did  not,  and  does  not,  believe  man 
to  be  sufficient  to  himself,  nor  naturally  in  posses- 
sion of  those  keys  which  would  open  the  doors 
to  full  knowledge  or  full  social  content.     It  pro- 


34  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

posed  (and  proposes)  its  doctrines  to  be  held  not 
as  opinions  but  as  a  body  of  faith. 

It  differed  from — or  was  more  solid  than — all 
around  it  in  this:  that  it  proposed  statement  in- 
stead of  hypothesis,  affirmed  concrete  historical 
facts  instead  of  suggesting  myths,  and  treated  its 
ritual  of  "mysteries"  as  realities  instead  of  sym- 
bols. 

A  word  as  to  the  constitution  of  the  Church. 
All  men  with  an  historical  training  know  that  the 
Church  of  the  years  200-250  was  what  I  have  de- 
scribed it,  an  organized  society  under  bishops,  and, 
what  is  more,  it  is  evident  that  there  was  a  cen- 
tral primacy  at  Rome  as  well  as  local  primacies  in 
various  other  great  cities.  But  what  is  not  so 
generally  emphasized  is  the  way  in  which  Chris- 
tian society  appears  to  have  looked  at  itself  at  that 
time. 

The  conception  which  the  Catholic  Church  had 
of  itself  in  the  early  third  century  can,  perhaps, 
best  be  approached  by  pointing  out  that  if  we  use 
the  word  "Christianity"  we  are  unhistorical. 
"Christianity"  is  a  term  in  the  mouth  and  upon 
the  pen  of  the  post-Reformation  writer;  it  con- 
notes an  opinion  or  a  theory;  a  point  of  view;  an 
idea.  The  Christians  of  the  time  of  which  I  speak 
had  no  such  conception.  Upon  the  contrary,  they 
were  attached  to  its  very  antithesis.  They  were 
attached  to  the  conception  of  a  thing:  of  an  or- 
ganized body  instituted  for  a  definite  end,  disci- 
plined in  a  definite  way,  and  remarkable  for  the 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  35 

possession  of  definite  and  concrete  doctrine.  One 
can  talk,  in  speaking  of  the  first  three  centuries, 
of  stoiczsm,  or  epicureanzsm,  or  neoplatonism;  but 
one  cannot  talk  of  "Christianfsm"  or  "Christzsm." 
Indeed,  no  one  has  been  so  ignorant  or  unhistorical 
as  to  attempt  those  phrases.  But  the  current 
phrase  "Christianity,"  used  by  moderns  as  identi- 
cal with  the  Christian  body  in  the  third  century,  is 
intellectually  the  equivalent  of  "Christianism"  or 
"Christism;"  and,  I  repeat,  it  connotes  a  grossly 
unhistorical  idea;  it  connotes  something  histori- 
cally false;  something  that  never  existed. 
Let  me  give  an  example  of  what  I  mean: 
Four  men  will  be  sitting  as  guests  of  a  fifth  in  a 
private  house  in  Carthage  in  the  year  225.  They 
are  all  men  of  culture;  all  possessed  of  the  two 
languages,  Greek  and  Latin,  well-read  and  inter- 
ested in  the  problems  and  half-solutions  of  their 
skeptical  time.  One  will  profess  himself  Material- 
ist, and  will  find  another  to  agree  with  him;  there 
is  no  personal  God,  certain  moral  duties  must  be 
recognized  by  men  for  such  and  such  utilitarian 
reasons,  and  so  forth.     He  finds  support. 

The  host  is  not  of  that  opinion;  he  has  been  pro- 
foundly influenced  by  certain  "mysteries"  into 
which  he  has  been  "initiated:"  That  is,  symbol- 
ical plays  showing  the  fate  of  the  soul  and  per- 
formed in  high  seclusion  before  members  of  a  soci- 
ety sworn  to  secrecy.  He  has  come  to  feel  a 
spiritual  life  as  the  natural  life  round  him.  He 
has  curiously  followed,  and  often  paid  at  high  ex- 


36  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

pense,  the  services  of  necromancers;  he  believes 
that  in  an  "initiation"  which  he  experienced  in  his 
youth,  and  during  the  secret  and  most  vivid  drama 
or  "mystery"  in  which  he  then  took  part,  he  ac- 
tually came  in  contact  with  the  spiritual  world. 
Such  men  were  not  uncommon.  The  declining  so- 
ciety of  the  time  was  already  turning  to  influences 
of  that  type. 

The  host's  conviction,  his  awed  and  reticent  atti- 
tude towards  such  things,  impress  his  guests. 
One  of  the  guests,  however,  a  simple,  solid  kind  of 
man,  not  drawn  to  such  vagaries,  says  that  he  has 
been  reading  with  great  interest  the  literature  of 
the  Christians.  He  is  in  admiration  of  the  tra- 
ditional figure  of  the  Founder  of  their  Church.  He 
quotes  certain  phrases,  especially  from  the  four 
orthodox  Gospels.  They  move  him  to  eloquence, 
and  their  poignancy  and  illuminative  power  have 
an  effect  upon  his  friends.  He  ends  by  saying: 
"For  my  part,  I  have  come  to  make  it  a  sort  of  rule 
to  act  as  this  Man  Christ  would  have  had  me  act. 
He  seems  to  me  to  have  led  the  most  perfect  life  I 
ever  read  of,  and  the  practical  maxims  which  are 
attached  to  His  Name  seem  to  me  a  sufficient  guide 
to  life.  That,"  he  will  conclude  simply,  "is  the 
groove  into  which  I  have  fallen,  and  I  do  not  think 
I  shall  ever  leave  it." 

Let  us  call  the  man  who  has  so  spoken,  Fer- 
reolus.  Would  Ferreolus  have  been  a  Christian? 
Would  the  officials  of  the  Roman  Empire  have 
called  him  a  Christian?     Would  he  have  been  in 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  37 

danger  of  unpopularity  where  Christians  were  un- 
popular? Would  Christians  have  received  him 
among  themselves  as  part  of  their  strict  and  still 
somewhat  secret  society?  Would  he  have  counted 
with  any  single  man  of  the  whole  Empire  as  one 
of  the  Christian  body? 

The  answer  is  most  emphatically  No. 

No  Christian  in  the  first  three  centuries  would 
have  held  such  a  man  as  coming  within  his  view. 
No  imperial  officer  in  the  most  violent  crisis  of  one 
of  those  spasmodic  persecutions  which  the  Church 
had  to  undergo  would  have  troubled  him  with  a 
single  question.  No  Christian  congregation  would 
have  regarded  him  as  in  any  way  connected  with 
their  body.  Opinion  of  that  sort,  "Christism,"  had 
no  relation  to  the  Church.  How  far  it  existed  we 
cannot  tell,  for  it  was  unimportant.  In  so  far  as  it 
existed  it  would  have  been  on  all  fours  with  any 
one  of  the  vague  opinions  which  floated  about  the 
cultured  Roman  world. 

Now  it  is  evident  that  the  term  "Christianity" 
used  as  a  point  of  view,  a  mere  mental  attitude, 
would  include  such  a  man,  and  it  is  equally  evident 
that  we  have  only  to  imagine  him  to  see  that  he 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Christian  religion  of 
that  day.  For  the  Christian  religion  (then  as  now) 
was  a  thing,  not  a  theory.  It  was  expressed  in 
what  I  have  called  an  organism,  and  that  organism 
was  the  Catholic  Church. 

The  reader  may  here  object:  "But  surely  there 
was   heresy  after  heresy   and  thousands   of  men 


38  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

were  at  any  moment  claiming  the  name  of  Chris- 
tian whom  the  orthodox  Church  rejected.  Nay, 
some  suffered  martyrdom  rather  than  relinquish 
the  name." 

True ;  but  the  very  existence  of  such  sects  should 
be  enough  to  prove  the  point  at  issue. 

(These  sects  arose  precisely  because  within  the 
Catholic  Church  (1)  exact  doctrine,  (2)  unbroken 
tradition,  and  (3)  absolute  unity,  were,  all  three, 
regarded  as  the  necessary  marks  of  the  institution. 
The  heresies  arose  one  after  another,  from  the  ac- 
tion of  men  who  were  prepared  to  define  yet  more 
punctiliously  what  the  truth  might  be,  and  to 
claim  with  yet  more  particular  insistence  the  pos- 
session of  living  tradition  and  the  right  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  centre  of  unity.  No  heresy  pre- 
tended that  the  truth  was  vague  and  indefinite. 
The  whole  gist  and  meaning  of  a  heresy  was  that 
it,  the  heresy,  or  he,  the  heresiarch,  was  prepared 
to  make  doctrine  yet  more  sharp,  and  to  assert  his 
own  definition. 

What  you  find  in  these  foundational  times  is  not 
the  Catholic  Church  asserting  and  defining  a  thing 
and  then,  some  time  after,  the  heresiarch  denying 
this  definition;  no  heresy  comes  within  a  hundred 
miles  of  such  a  procedure.  What  happens  in  the 
early  Church  is  that  some  doctrine  not  yet  fully 
defined  is  laid  down  by  such  and  such  a  man,  that 
his  final  settlement  clashes  with  the  opinion  of 
others,  that  after  debate  and  counsel,  and  also 
authoritative  statement  on  the  part  of  the  bishops, 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  39 

this  man's  solution  is  rejected  and  an  orthodox 
solution  is  defined.  From  that  moment  the  heresi- 
arch,  if  he  will  not  fall  into  line  with  defined 
opinion,  ceases  to  be  in  communion;  and  his  re- 
jection, no  less  than  his  own  original  insistence 
upon  his  doctrine,  are  in  themselves  proofs  that 
both  he  and  his  judges  postulate  unity  and 
definition  as  the  two  necessary  marks  of  Cath- 
olic truth. 

No  early  heretic  or  no  early  orthodox  authority 
dreams  of  saying  to  his  opponent:  "You  may  be 
right!  Let  us  agree  to  differ.  Let  us  each  form 
his  part  of  'Christian  society'  and  look  at  things 
from  his  own  point  of  view."  The  moment  a  ques- 
tion is  raised  it  must  of  its  nature,  the  early  Church 
being  what  it  was,  be  defined  one  way  or  the  other. 

Well,  then,  what  was  this  body  of  doctrine  held 
by  common  tradition  and  present  everywhere  in 
the  first  years  of  the  third  century? 

Let  me  briefly  set  down  what  we  know,  as  a 
matter  of  historical  and  documentary  evidence,  the 
Church  of  this  period  to  have  held.  What  we 
know  is  a  very  different  matter  from  what  we  can 
guess.  We  may  amplify  it  from  our  conceptions 
of  the  probable  according  to  our  knowledge  of  that 
society — as,  for  instance,  when  we  say  that  there 
was  probably  a  bishop  at  Marseilles  before  the 
middle  of  the  second  century.  Or  we  may  amplify 
it  by  guesswork,  and  suppose,  in  the  absence  of 
evidence,  some  just  possible  but  exceedingly  im- 
probable thing:   as,  that  an  important  canonical 


40  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Gospel  has  been  lost.  There  is  an  infinite  range 
for  guesswork,  both  orthodox  and  heretical.  But 
the  plain  and  known  facts  which  repose  upon  his- 
torical and  documentary  evidence,  and  which  have 
no  corresponding  documentary  evidence  against 
them,  are  both  few  and  certain. 

Let  us  take  such  a  writer  as  Tertullian  and  set 
down  what  was  certainly  true  of  his  time. 

Tertullian  was  a  man  of  about  forty  in  the  year 
200.  The  Church  then  taught  as  an  unbroken 
tradition  that  a  Man  who  had  been  put  to  death 
about  170  years  before  in  Palestine — only  130 
years  before  Tertullian's  birth — had  risen  again  on 
the  third  day.  This  Man  was  a  known  and  real 
person  with  whom  numbers  had  conversed.  In 
Tertullian's  childhood  men  still  lived  who  had  met 
eye  witnesses  of  the  thing  asserted. 

This  Man  (the  Church  said)  was  also  the  su- 
preme Creator  God.  There  you  have  an  apparent 
contradiction  in  terms,  at  any  rate  a  mystery,  fruit- 
ful in  opportunities  for  theory,  and  as  a  fact 
destined  to  lead  to  three  centuries  of  more  and 
more  particular  definition. 

This  Man,  Who  also  was  God  Himself,  had, 
through  chosen  companions  called  Apostles, 
founded  a  strict  and  disciplined  society  called  the 
Church.  The  doctrines  the  Church  taught  pro- 
fessed to  be  His  doctrines.  They  included  the  im- 
mortality of  the  human  soul,  its  redemption,  its 
alternative  of  salvation  and  damnation. 

Initiation  into  the  Church  was  by  way  of  baph 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  41 

tism  with  water  in  the  name  of  The  Trinity; 
Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost. 

Before  His  death  this  Man  Who  was  also  God 
had  instituted  a  certain  rite  and  Mystery  called  the 
Eucharist.  He  took  bread  and  wine  and  changed 
them  into  His  Body  and  Blood.  He  ordered  this 
rite  to  be  continued.  The  central  act  of  worship 
of  the  Christian  Church  was  therefore  a  consecra- 
tion of  bread  and  wine  by  priests  in  the  presence 
of  the  initiated  and  baptized  Christian  body  of  the 
locality.  The  bread  and  wine  so  consecrated  were 
certainly  called  (universally)  the  Body  of  the 
Lord. 

The  faithful  also  certainly  communicated,  that 
is,  eat  the  Bread  and  drank  the  Wine  thus  changed 
in  the  Mystery. 

It  was  the  central  rite  of  the  Church  thus  to  take 
the  Body  of  the  Lord. 

There  was  certainly  at  the  head  of  each  Chris- 
tian community  a  bishop :  regarded  as  directly  the 
successor  of  the  Apostles,  the  chief  agent  of  the 
ritual  and  the  guardian  of  doctrine. 

The  whole  increasing  body  of  local  communities 
kept  in  touch  through  their  bishops,  held  one  doc- 
trine and  practiced  what  was  substantially  one 
ritual. 

All  that  is  plain  history. 

The  numerical  proportion  of  the  Church  in  the 
city  of  Carthage,  where  Tertullian  wrote,  was  cer- 
tainly large  enough  for  its  general  suppression  to 
be  impossible.     One  might  argue  from  one  of  his 


42  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

phrases  that  it  was  a  tenth  of  the  population. 
Equally  certainly  did  the  unity  of  the  Christian 
Church  and  its  bishops  teach  the  institution  of  the 
Eucharist,  the  Resurrection,  the  authority  of  the 
Apostles,  and  their  power  of  tradition  through  the 
bishops.  A  very  large  number  of  converts  were 
to  be  noted  and  (to  go  back  to  Tertullian)  the  ma- 
jority of  his  time,  by  his  testimony,  were  recruited 
by  conversion,  and  were  not  born  Christians. 

Such  is  known  to  have  been,  in  a  very  brief  out- 
line, the  manner  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  these 
early  years  of  the  third  century.  Such  -was  the 
undisputed  manner  of  the  Church,  as  a  Christian 
or  an  inquiring  pagan  would  have  been  acquainted 
with  it  in  the  years  160-200  and  onwards. 

I  have  purposely  chosen  this  moment,  because  it 
is  the  moment  in  which  Christian  evidence  first 
emerges  upon  any  considerable  scale.  Many  of 
the  points  I  have  set  down  are,  of  course,  demon- 
strably anterior  to  the  third  century.  I  mean  by 
"demonstrably"  anterior,  proved  in  earlier  docu- 
mentary testimony.  That  ritual  and  doctrine 
firmly  fixed  are  long  anterior  to  the  time  in  which 
you  fmd  them  rooted  is  obvious  to  common  sensCo 
But  there  are  documents  as  well. 

Thus,  we  have  Justin  Martyr.  He  was  no  less 
than  sixty  years  older  than  Tertullian.  He  was  as 
near  to  the  Crucifixion  as  my  generation  is  to  the 
Reform  Bill — and  he  gave  us  a  full  description  of 
the  Mass. 

We  have  the  letters  of  St.  Ignatius.     He  was  a 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  43 

much  older  man  than  St.  Justin — perhaps  forty  or 
fifty  years  older.  He  stood  to  the  generations  con- 
temporary with  Our  Lord  as  I  stand  to  the  genera- 
tion of  Gladstone,  Bismarck,  and,  early  as  he  is,  he 
testifies  fully  to  the  organization  of  the  Church 
with  its  Bishops,  the  Eucharistic  Doctrine,  and  the 
Primacy  in  it  of  the  Roman  See. 

The  literature  remaining  to  us  from  the  early 
first  century  and  a  half  after  the  Crucifixion  is 
very  scanty.  The  writings  of  what  are  called 
"Apostolic"  times — that  is,  documents  proceeding 
immediately  from  men  who  could  rememher  the 
time  of  Our  Lord,  form  not  only  in  their  quantity 
(and  that  is  sufficiently  remarkable),  but  in  their 
quality,  too,  a  far  superior  body  of  evidence  to 
what  we  possess  from  the  next  generation.  We 
have  more  in  the  New  Testament  than  we  have  in 
the  writings  of  these  men  who  came  just  after  the 
death  of  the  Apostles.  But  what  does  remain  is 
quite  convincing.  There  arose  from  the  date  of 
Our  Lord's  Ascension  into  heaven,  from,  say,  A. 
D.  30  or  so,  before  the  death  of  Tiberius  and  a 
long  lifetime  after  the  Roman  organization  of  Gaul, 
a  definite,  strictly  ruled  and  highly  individual 
Society,  with  fixed  doctrines,  special  mysteries,  and 
a  strong  discipline  of  its  own.  With  a  most  vivid 
and  distinct  personality,  unmistakeable.  And  this 
Society  was,  and  is,  called  "The  Church." 

I  would  beg  the  reader  to  note  with  precision 
both  the  task  upon  which  we  are  engaged  and  the 
exact  dates  with  which  we  are  dealing,  for  there  is 


44  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

no  matter  in  which  history  has  been  more  griev- 
ously distorted  by  religious  bias. 

The  task  upon  which  we  are  engaged  is  the  judg- 
ment of  a  portion  of  history  as  it  was.  I  am  not 
wTiting  here  from  a  brief.  I  am  concerned  to  set 
forth  a  fact.  I  am  acting  as  a  witness  or  a  copier, 
not  as  an  advocate  or  lawyer.  And  I  say  that  the 
conclusion  we  can  establish  with  regard  to  the 
Christian  community  on  these  main  lines  is  the 
conclusion  to  which  any  man  must  come  quite 
independently  of  his  creed.  He  will  deny  these 
facts  only  if  he  has  such  bias  against  the  Faith  as 
interferes  with  his  reason.  A  man's  belief  in  the 
mission  of  the  Catholic  Church,  his  confidence  in 
its  divine  origin,  do  not  move  him  to  these  plain 
historical  conclusions  any  more  than  they  move 
him  to  his  conclusions  upon  the  real  existence,  doc- 
trine and  organization  of  contemporary  Mormon- 
ism.  Whether  the  Church  told  the  truth  is  for 
philosophy  to  discuss:  What  the  Church  in  fact 
was  is  plain  history.  The  Church  may  have  taught 
nonsense.  Its  organization  may  have  been  a 
clumsy  human  thing.  That  would  not  affect  the 
historical  facts. 

By  the  year  200  the  Church  was — everywhere, 
manifestly  and  in  ample  evidence  throughout  the 
Roman  world — what  I  have  described,  and  taught 
the  doctrines  I  have  just  enumerated:  but  it 
stretches  back  one  hundred  and  seventy  years  be- 
fore that  date  and  it  has  evidence  to  its  title 
tiiroughout  that  era  of  youth. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  45* 

To  see  that  the  state  of  affairs  everywhere  widely 
apparent  in  A.  D.  200  was  rooted  in  the  very 
origins  of  the  institution  one  hundred  and  seventy 
years  before,  to  see  that  all  this  mass  of  ritual,  doc- 
trine and  discipline  starts  with  the  first  third  of 
the  first  century,  and  the  Church  was  from  its  birth 
the  Church,  the  reader  must  consider  the  dates. 

We  know  that  we  have  in  the  body  of  documents 
contained  in  the  "canon"  which  the  Church  has 
authorized  as  the  "New  Testament,"  documents 
proceeding  from  men  who  were  contemporaries 
with  the  origin  of  the  Christian  religion.  Even 
modern  scholarship  with  all  its  love  of  phantasy 
is  now  clear  upon  so  obvious  a  point.  The  authors 
of  the  Gospels,  the  Acts,  and  the  Epistles,  Clement 
also,  and  Ignatius  also  (who  had  conversed  with 
the  Apostles)  may  have  been  deceived,  they  may 
have  been  deceiving.  I  am  not  here  concerned 
with  that  point.  The  discussion  of  it  belongs  to 
another  province  of  argument  altogether.  But 
they  were  contemporaries  of  the  things  they  said 
they  were  contemporaries  of.  In  other  words, 
their  writings  are  what  is  called  "authentic." 

""If  I  read  in  the  four  Gospels  (not  only  the  first 
three)  of  such  and  such  a  miracle,  I  believe  it  or 
I  disbelieve  it.  But  I  am  reading  the  account  of 
a  man  who  lived  at  the  time  when  the  miracle  is 
said  to  have  happened.  If  you  read  (in  Ignatius* 
seven  certainly  genuine  letters)  of  Episcopacy  and 
of  the  Eucharist,  you  may  think  him  a  wrong- 
headed  enthusiast.     But  you  know  that  you  are 


46  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

reading  the  work  of  a  man  who  personally  wit- 
nessed the  beginnings  of  the  Church;  you  know 
that  the  customs,  manners,  doctrines  and  institu- 
tions he  mentions  or  takes  for  granted,  were  cer- 
tainly those  of  his  time,  that  is,  of  the  origin  of 
Catholicism,  though  you  may  think  the  customs 
silly  and  the  doctrines  nonsense. 

St.  Ignatius  talking  about  the  origin  and  present 
character  of  the  Catholic  Church  is  exactly  in  the 
position — in  the  matter  of  dates — of  a  man  of  our 
time  talking  about  the  rise  and  present  character 
of  the  Socialists  or  of  the  rise  and  present  character 
of  Leopold's  Kingdom  of  Belgium,  of  United  Italy, 
the  modern.  He  is  talking  of  what  is,  virtually, 
his  own  time. 

Well,  there  comes  after  this  considerable  body 
of  contemporary  documentary  evidence  (evidence 
contemporary,  that  is,  with  the  very  spring  and 
rising  of  the  Church  and  proceeding  from  its  first 
founders),  a  gap  which  is  somewhat  more  than  the 
long  lifetime  of  a  man. 

This  gap  is  with  difficulty  bridged.  The  vast 
mass  of  its  documentary  evidence  has,  of  course, 
perished,  as  has  the  vast  mass  of  all  ancient  writ- 
ing. The  little  preserved  is  mainly  preserved  in 
quotations  and  fragments.  But  after  this  gap, 
from  somewhat  before  the  year  200,  we  come  to 
the  beginning  of  a  regular  series,  and  a  series  in- 
creasing in  volume,  of  documentary  evidence. 
Not,  I  repeat,  of  evidence  to  the  truth  of  supernat- 
ural doctrines,  but  of  evidence  to  what  these  doc- 


i 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  47 

trines  and  their  accompanying  ritual  and  organiza- 
tion were :  evidence  to  the  way  in  which  the  Church 
was  constituted,  to  the  way  in  which  she  regarded 
her  mission,  to  the  things  she  thought  important, 
to  the  practice  of  her  rites. 

That  is  why  I  have  taken  the  early  third  century 
as  the  moment  in  which  we  can  first  take  a  full 
historical  view  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  being, 
and  this  picture  is  full  of  evidence  to  the  state  of 
the.  Church  in  its  origins  three  generations  before. 

\I  say,  again,  it  is  all-important  for  the  reader 
who  desires  a  true  historical  picture  to  seize  the 
sequence  of  the  dates  with  which  we  are  dealing, 
their  relation  to  the  length  of  human  life  and  there- 
fore to  the  society  to  which  they  relate. 

It  is  all-important  because  the  false  history 
which  has  had  its  own  way  for  so  many  years  is 
based  upon  two  false  suggestions  of  the  first  magni- 
tude. The  first  is  the  suggestion  that  the  pe- 
riod between  the  Crucifixion  and  the  full  Church 
of  the  third  century  was  one  in  which  vast  changes 
could  proceed  unobserved,  and  vast  perversions  of 
original  ideas  be  rapidly  developed;  the  second  is 
that  the  space  of  time  during  which  those  changes 
are  supposed  to  have  taken  place  was  sufficient  to 
account  for  them. 

It  is  only  because  those  days  are  remote  from 
ours  that  such  suggestions  can  be  made.  If  we 
put  ourselves  by  an  effort  of  the  imagination  into 
the  surroundings  of  that  period,  we  can  soon  dis- 
cover* how  false  these  suggestions  are. 


48  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

(The  period  was  not  one  favorable  to  the  inter- 
ruption of  record.  It  was  one  of  a  very  high  cul- 
ture. The  proportion  of  curious,  intellectual,  and 
skeptical  men  which  that  society  contained  was 
perhaps  greater  than  in  any  other  period  with 
which  we  are  acquainted.  It  was  certainly  greater 
than  it  is  today.  Those  times  were  certainly  less 
susceptible  to  mere  novel  assertion  than  are  the 
crowds  of  our  great  cities  under  the  influence  of 
the  modern  press.  It  was  a  period  astonishingly 
alive.  Lethargy  and  decay  had  not  yet  touched 
the  world  of  the  Empire.  It  built,  read,  traveled, 
discussed,  and,  above  all,  criticized,  with  an  enor- 
mous energy. 

In  general,  it  was  no  period  during  which  alien 
fashions  could  rise  within  such  a  community  as  the 
Church  without  their  opponents  being  immediate- 
ly able  to  combat  them  by  an  appeal  to  the  evi- 
dence of  the  immediate  past.  The  world  in  which 
the  Church  arose  was  one;  and  that  world  was  in- 
tensely vivid.  Anyone  in  that  world  who  saw  such 
an  institution  as  Episcopacy  (for  instance)  or  such 
a  doctrine  as  the  Divinity  of  Christ  to  be  a  novel 
corruption  of  originals  could  have,  and  would 
have,  protested  at  once.  It  was  a  world  of  ample 
record  and  continual  communication. 

Granted  such  a  world  let  us  take  the  second 
point  and  see  what  was  the  distance  in  mere  time 
between  this  early  third  century  of  which  T  speak 
and  what  is  called  the  Apostolic  period;  that  is, 
the  generation  which  could   still  remember  the 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  49 

origins  of  the  Church  in  Jerusalem  and  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Gospel  in  Grecian,  Italian,  and  perhaps 
African  cities.  We  are  often  told  that  changes 
"gradually  crept  in;"  that  "the  imperceptihle  ef- 
fect of  time"  did  this  or  that,  Let  us  see  how 
these  vague  phrases  stand  the  test  of  confrontation 
with  actual  dates. 

iLet  us  stand  in  the  years  200-210,  consider  a 
man  then  advanced  in  years,  well  read  and 
traveled,  and  present  in  those  first  years  of  the 
third  century  at  the  celebration  of  the  Eucharist. 
There  were  many  such  men  who,  if  they  had  been 
able  to  do  so,  would  have  reproved  novelties  and 
denounced  perverted  tradition.  That  none  did  so 
is  a  sufficient  proof  that  the  main  lines  of  Catholic 
government  and  practice  had  developed  unbroken 
and  unwarped  from  at  least  his  own  childhood. 
But  an  old  man  who  so  witnes'sed  the  constitution 
of  the  Church  and  its  practices  as  I  have  described 
them  in  the  year  200,  would  correspond  to  that 
generation  of  old  people  whom  we  have  with  us 
today;  the  old  people  who  were  born  in  the  late 
twenties  and  thirties  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
the  old  people  who  can  just  remember  the  English 
Reform  Bill,  and  who  were  almost  grown  up  dur- 
ing the  troubles  of  1848  and  the  establishment 
of  the  second  Empire  in  Paris:  the  old  people  in 
the  United  States  who  can  remember  as  children 
the  election  of  Van  Buren  to  the  office  of  Presi- 
dent: the  old  people  whose  birth  was  not  far  re- 
moved from  the  death  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  and 


50  EUROPE  A?^D  THE  FAITH 

who  were  grown  men  and  women  when  gold  was 
first  discovered  in  California. 

/Well,  pursuing  that  parallel,  consider  next  the 
persecution  under  Nero.  It  was  the  great  event 
to  which  the  Christians  would  refer  as  a  date  in 
the  early  history  of  the  Church.  It  took  place  in 
Apostolic  times.  It  affected  men  who,  though 
aged,  could  easily  remember  Judea  in  the  years 
connected  with  Our  Lord's  mission  and  His  Pas- 
sion. St.  Peter  lived  to  witness,  in  that  persecu- 
tion, to  the  Faith.  St.  John  survived  it.  It  came 
not  forty  years  later  than  the  day  of  Pentecost. 
But  the  persecution  under  Nero  was  to  an  old  man 
such  as  I  have  supposed  assisting  at  the  Eucharist 
in  the  early  part  of  the  third  century,  no  further 
off  than  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  from 
the  old  people  of  our  generation.  An  old  man  in 
the  year  200  could  certainly  remember  many  who 
had  themselves  been  witnesses  of  the  Apostolic 
age,  just  as  an  old  man  today  remembers  well  men 
who  saw  the  French  Revolution  and  the  Napoleonic 
wars.  The  old  people  who  had  surrounded  his 
childhood  would  be  to  St.  Paul,  St.  Peter  and  St. 
John  what  the  old  people  who  survived,  say,  to 
1845,  would  have  been  to  Jefferson,  to  Lafayette, 
or  to  the  younger  Pitt.  They  could  have  seen  and 
talked  to  that  first  generation  of  the  Church  as  the 
corresponding  people  surviving  in  the  early  nine- 
teenth century  could  have  seen  and  talked  with 
the  founders  of  the  United  States. 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  imagine  that  the  Eucha- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  51 

ristic  Sacrifice,  the  Rite  of  Initiation  (Baptism  in 
the  name  of  the  Trinity),  the  establishment  of  an 
Episcopacy,  the  fierce  defence  of  unity  and  ortho- 
doxy, and  all  those  main  lines  of  Catholicism  which 
we  find  to  be  the  very  essence  of  the  Church  in  the 
early  third  century,  could  have  risen  without  pro- 
test. They  cannot  have  come  from  an  innocent, 
natural,  uncivilized  perversion  of  an  original  so 
very  recent  and  so  open  to  every  form  of  examina- 
tion. 

^That  there  should  have  been  discussion  as  to  the 
definition  and  meaning  of  undecided  doctrines  is 
natural,  and  fits  in  both  with  the  dates  and  with 
the  atmosphere  of  the  period  and  with  the  char- 
acter of  the  subject.  But  that  a  whole  scheme  of 
Christian  government  and  doctrine  should  have 
developed  in  contradiction  of  Christian  origins  and 
yet  without  protest  in  a  period  so  brilliantly  living, 
full  of  such  rapid  intercommunication,  and,  above 
all,  so  brief,  is  quite  impossible. 

That  is  what  history  has  to  say  of  the  early 
Church  in  the  Roman  Empire.  The  Gospels,  the 
Acts,  the  Canonical  Epistles  and  those  of  Clement 
and  Ignatius  may  tell  a  true  or  a  false  story;  their 
authors  may  have  written  under  an  illusion  or 
from  a  conscious  self-deception;  or  they  may  have 
been  supremely  true  and  immutably  sincere.  But 
they  are  contemporary.  A  man  may  respect  their 
divine  origin  or  he  may  despise  their  claims  to  in- 
struct the  human  race;  but  that  the  Christian  body 
from  its  beginning  was  not  "Christianity"  but  a 


52  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Church  and  that  that  Church  was  identically  one 
with  what  was  already  called  long  before  the  third 
centuryi  the  Catholic  Church,  is  simply  plain  his- 
tory, as  plain  and  straightforward  as  the  history, 
let  us  say,  of  municipal  institutions  in  contempor- 
ary Gaul.  It  is  history  indefinitely  better  proved, 
and  therefore  indefinitely  more  certain  than,  let  us 
say,  modern  guesswork  on  imaginary  "Teutonic 
Institutions"  before  the  eighth  century  or  the  still 
more  imaginary  "Aryan"  origins  of  the  European 
race,  or  any  other  of  the  pseudo-scientific  hypoth- 
eses which  still  try  to  pass  for  historical  truth. 

So  much  for  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  early 
third  century  when  first  we  have  a  mass  of  evi- 
dence upon  it.  It  is  a  highly  disciplined,  powerful 
growing  body,  intent  on  unity,  ruled  by  bishops, 
having  for  its  central  doctrine  the  Incarnation  of 
God  in  an  historical  Person,  Jesus  Christ,  and  for 
its  central  rite  a  Mystery,  the  transformation  of 
Bread  and  Wine  by  priests  into  the  Body  and  Blood 
which  the  faithful  consume. 

This  "State  within  the  States"  by  the  year  200 
already  had  affected  the  Empire:  in  the  next  gen- 
eration it  permeated  the  Empire;  it  was  already 
transforming  European  civilization.  By  the  year 
200  the  thing  was  done.  As  the  Empire  declined 
the  Catholic  Church  caught  and  preserved  it. 

What  was  the  process  of  that  decline? 

»The  Muratorian  Fragment  is  older  than  the  third  century,  and 
St.  Ignatius,  who  also  uses  the  word  Catholic,  was  as  near  to  the 
time  of  the   Gospels   as   I   am   to   the   Crimean   War. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  53 

QTo  answer  such  a  question  we  have  next  to  ob- 
serve three  developments  that  followed:  (1)  The 
great  increase  of  barbarian  hired  soldiery  within 
the  Empire;  (2)  The  weakening  of  the  central 
power  as  compared  with  the  local  power  of  the 
small  and  increasingly  rich  class  of  great  land- 
owners; (3)  The  rise  of  the  Catholic  Church  from 
an  admitted  position  (and  soon  a  predominating 
position)  to  complete  mastery  over  all  society. 

i  All  these  three  phenomena  developed  together; 
titey  occupied  about  two  hundred  years — roughly 
from  the  year  300  to  the  year  500.  When  they 
had  run  their  course  the  Western  Empire  was  no 
longer  governed  as  one  society  from  one  Imperial 
centre.  The  chance  heads  of  certain  auxiliary 
forces  in  the  Roman  Army,  drawn  from  barbaric 
recruitment,  had  established  themselves  in  the 
various  provinces  and  were  calling  themselves 
"Kings."  The  Catholic  Church  was  everywhere 
the  religion  of  the  great  majority;  it  had  every- 
where alliance  with,  and  often  the  use  of,  the  ofii- 
cial  machinery  of  government  and  taxation  which 
continued  unbroken.  It  had  become,  far  beyond 
all  other  organisms  in  the  Roman  State,  the  cen- 
tral and  typical  organism  which  gave  the  Euro- 
pean world  its  note.  This  process  is  commonly^ 
called  "The  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire;"  what  was 
that  "fall?"  What  really  happened  in  this  great 
transformation? 


Ill 

What  Was  the  "Fall"  of  the  Roman  Empire? 

That  state  of  society  which  I  have  just  de- 
scribed, the  ordered  and  united  society  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  passed  into  another  and  very  differ- 
ent state  of  society:  the  society  of  what  are  called 
"The  Dark  Ages." 

From  these  again  rose,  after  another  600  years 
of  adventures  and  perils,  the  great  harvest  of 
mediaeval  civilization.  Hardly  had  the  Roman 
Empire  turned  in  its  maturity  to  accept  the  fruit 
of  its  long  development  (I  mean  the  Catholic 
Church),  when  it  began  to  grow  old  and  was 
clearly  about  to  suffer  some  great  transition.  But 
that  transition,  which  threatened  to  be  death, 
proved  in  the  issue  not  death  at  all,  but  a  mixture 
of  Vision  and  Change. 

The  close  succession  of  fruit  and  decay  in  soci- 
ety is  what  one  expects  from  the  analogy  of  all  liv- 
ing things:  at  the  close  of  the  cycle  it  is  death 
that  should  come.  A  plant,  just  after  it  is  most 
fruitful,  falls  quickly.  So,  one  might  imagine, 
should  the  long  story  of  Mediterranean  civilization 
have  proceeded.  When  it  was  at  its  final  and  most 
complete  stage,  one  would  expect  some  final  and 

54 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  55 

complete  religion  which  should  satisfy  its  long 
search  and  solve  its  ancient  riddles:  but  after  such 
a  discovery,  after  the  fruit  of  such  a  maturity  had 
fully  developed,  one  would  expect  an  end. 

\Now  it  has  been  the  singular  fortune  of  our 
European  civilization  that  an  end  did  not  come. 
Dissolution  was  in  some  strange  way  checked. 
Death  was  averted.  And  the  more  closely  one 
looks  into  the  unique  history  of  that  salvation — 
the  salvation  of  all  that  could  be  saved  in  a  most 
ancient  and  fatigued  society — the  more  one  sees 
that  this  salvation  was  effected  by  no  agency  save 
that  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Everything  else, 
after,  say,  250  A.  D.,  the  empty  fashionable  philos- 
ophies, the  barbarians  filling  the  army,  the  current 
passions  and  the  current  despair,  made  for  nothing 
but  ruin. 

There  is  no  parallel  to  this  survival  in  all  the 
history  of  mankind.  Every  other  great  civiliza- 
tion has,  after  many  centuries  of  development, 
either  fallen  into  a  fixed  and  sterile  sameness  or 
died  and  disappeared.  There  is  nothing  left  of 
Egypt,  there  is  nothing  left  of  Assyria.  The  East- 
ern civilizations  remain,  but  remain  immovable  i 
or  if  they  change  can  only  vulgarly  copy  external 
models. 

But  the  civilization  of  Europe — the  civilization, 
that  is,  of  Rome  and  of  the  Empire — had  a  third 
fortune  differing  both  from  death  and  from  steril- 
ity: it  survived  to  a  resurrection.  Its  essential 
seeds  were  preserved  for  a  Second  Spring. 


56  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

/For  five  or  six  liundred  years  men  carved  less 
well,  wrote  verse  less  well,  let  roads  fall  slowly  into 
ruin,  lost  or  rather  coarsened  the  machinery  of 
government,  forgot  or  neglected  much  in  letters 
and  in  the  arts  and  in  the  sciences.  But  there  was 
preserved,  right  through  that  long  period,  not  only 
so  much  of  letters  and  of  the  arts  as  would  suffice 
to  bridge  the  great  gulf  between  the  fifth  century 
and  the  eleventh,  but  also  so  much  of  what  was 
really  vital  in  the  mind  of  Europe  as  would  permit 
that  mind  to  blossom  again  after  its  repose.  And 
the  agency,  I  repeat,  which  effected  this  conserva- 
tion of  the  seeds,  was  the  Catholic  Church. 

It  is  impossible  to  understand  this  truth,  indeed 
it  is  impossible  to  make  any  sense  at  all  of  Euro- 
pean history,  if  we  accept  that  story  of  the  decline 
which  is  currently  put  forward  in  anti-Catholic 
academies,  and  which  has  seemed  sufficient  to  anti- 
Catholic  historians. 

Their  version  is,  briefly,  this:  The  Roman  Em- 
pire, becoming  corrupt  and  more  vicious  through 
the  spread  of  luxury  and  through  a  sort  of  native 
weakness  to  be  discovered  in  the  very  blood  of  the 
Mediterranean,  was  at  last  invaded  and  over- 
whelmed by  young  and  vigorous  tribes  of  Germans. 
These  brought  with  them  all  the  strength  of  those 
native  virtues  which  later  rejected  the  unity  of 
Christendom  and  began  the  modern  Protestant 
societies — which  are  already  nearly  atheist  and 
very  soon  will  be  wholly  so. 

A  generic  term  has  been  invented  by  these  mod- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  57 

ern  and  false  historians  whose  version  I  am  here 
giving;  the  vigorous,  young,  uncorrupt,  and  virtu- 
ous tribes  which  are  imagined  to  have  broken 
through  the  boundaries  of  the  effete  Empire  and  to 
have  rejuvenated  it,  are  grouped  together  as  "Teu- 
tonic:" a  German  strain  very  strong  numerically, 
superior  also  to  what  was  left  of  Roman  civilization 
in  virile  power,  is  said  to  have  come  in  and  to  have 
taken  over  the  handling  of  affairs.  One  great  body 
of  these  Germans,  the  Franks,  are  said  to  have 
taken  over  Gaul;  another  (the  Goths,  in  their  vari- 
ous branches)  Italy  and  Spain.  But  most  com- 
plete, most  fruitful,  and  most  satisfactory  of  all 
(they  tell  us)  was  the  eruption  of  these  vigorous 
and  healthy  pagans  into  the  outlying  province  of 
Britain,  which  they  wholly  conquered,  exterminat- 
ing its  original  inhabitants  and  colonizing  it  with 
their  superior  stock. 

"It  was  inevitable"  (the  anti-Catholic  historian 
proceeds  to  admit)  "that  the  presence  of  uncul- 
tured though  superior  men  should  accelerate  the 
decline  of  arts  in  the  society  which  they  thus  con- 
quered. It  is  further  to  be  deplored  that  their 
simpler  and  native  virtues  were  contaminated  by 
the  arts  of  the  Roman  clergy  and  that  in  some 
measure  the  official  religion  of  Rome  captured 
their  noble  souls;  for  that  official  religion  per- 
mitted the  poison  of  the  Roman  decline  to  affect 
all  the  European  mind — even  the  German  mind — 
for  many  centuries.  But  at  the  same  time  this  evil 
effect   was   counter-balanced   by   the   ineradicable 


58  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

strength  and  virtues  of  the  Northern  barbaric 
blood.  This  sacred  Teutonic  blood  it  was  which 
brought  into  Western  Europe  the  subtlety  of  ro- 
mantic conceptions,  the  true  lyric  touch  in  poetry, 
the  deep  reverence  which  was  (till  recently)  the 
note  of  their  religion,  the  love  of  adventure  in 
which  the  old  civilization  was  lacking,  and  a  vast 
respect  for  women.  At  the  same  time  their  war- 
rior spirit  evolved  the  great  structure  of  feudalism, 
the  chivalric  model  and  the  whole  military  ideal 
of  mediaeval  civilization. 

"Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  when  great  new 
areas  of  knowledge  were  opened  up  in  the  later 
fifteenth  century  by  suddenly  expanded  travel,  by 
the  printing  press,  and  by  an  unexpected  advance 
in  physical  science,  the  emancipation  of  the  Euro- 
pean mind  should  have  brought  this  pure  and  bar- 
baric stock  to  its  own  again? 

"In  proportion  as  Teutonic  blood  was  strong, 
in  that  proportion  was  the  hierarchy  of  the  Catho- 
lic Church  and  the  hold  upon  men  of  Catholic  tra- 
dition, shaken  in  the  early  sixteenth  century;  and 
before  that  century  had  closed  the  manly  stirp  of 
North  Germany,  Holland,  Scandinavia  and  Eng- 
land, had  developed  the  Protestant  civilization  a 
society  advancing,  healthy,  and  already  the  master 
of  all  rivals;  destined  soon  to  be,  if  it  be  not  al- 
ready, supreme." 

Such  is  not  an  exaggerated  summary  of  what  the 
anti-Catholic  school  of  history  gave  us  from  Ger* 
man  and  from  English  universities  (with  the  pa/ 


EUROPE  A^'D  THE  FAITH  59 

tial  aid  of  anti-Catholic  academic  forces  within 
Catholic  countries)  during  the  first  two-thirds  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

There  went  with  this  strange  way  of  rewriting 
history  a  flood  of  wild  hypotheses  presented  as 
fact.  Thus  Parliaments  (till  lately  admired)  were 
imagined — and  therefore  stated — to  be  Teutonic, 
non-Roman,  therefore  non-Catholic  in  origin.  The 
gradual  decline  of  slavery  was  attributed  to  the 
same  miraculous  powers  in  the  northern  pagans; 
and  in  general  whatever  thing  was  good  in  itself 
or  was  consonant  with  modern  ideas,  was  referred 
back  to  this  original  source  of  good  in  the  business 
of  Europe:  the  German  tribes. 

Meanwhile  the  religious  hatred  these  false  his- 
torians had  of  civilization,  that  is,  of  Roman  tradi- 
tion and  the  Church,  showed  itself  in  a  hundred 
other  ways:  the  conquest  of  Spain  by  the  Mo- 
hammedans was  represented  by  them  as  the  vic- 
tory of  a  superior  people  over  a  degraded  and  con- 
temptible one:  the  Reconquest  of  Spain  by  our 
race  over  the  Asiatics  as  a  disaster:  its  final 
triumphant  instrument,  the  Inquisition,  which 
saved  Spain  from  a  Moorish  ravage  was  made  out 
a  monstrosity.  Every  revolt,  however  obscure, 
against  the  unity  of  European  civilization  in  the 
Middle  Ages  (notably  the  worst  revolt  of  all,  the 
Albigensian),  was  presented  as  a  worthy  uplifting 
of  the  human  mind  against  conditions  of  bondage. 
Most  remarkable  of  all,  the  actual  daily  life  of 
Catholic  Europe,  the  habit,  way  of  thought  and 


60  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

manner  of  men,  during  the  period  of  unity — from, 
say,  the  eighth  century  to  the  fifteenth — was 
simply  omitted ! 

At  the  moment  when  history  was  struggling  to 
become  a  scientific  study,  this  school  of  self-pleas- 
ing fairy  tales  held  the  field.  When  at  last  history 
did  become  a  true  scientific  study,  this  school  col- 
lapsed. But  it  yet  retains,  as  an  inheritance  from 
its  old  hegemony,  a  singular  power  in  the  lower 
and  more  popular  forms  of  historical  writing;  and 
where  the  English  language  is  spoken  it  is,  even 
today,  almost  the  only  view  of  European  develop- 
ment which  the  general  student  can  obtain. 

It  will  be  noted  at  the  outset  that  the  whole  of 
the  fantastic  picture  which  this  old  and  now  dis- 
credited theory  presented,  is  based  upon  a  certain 
conception  of  what  happened  at  the  breakdown  of 
the  Roman  Empire. 

Unless  these  barbaric  German  tribes  did  come  in 
and  administrate,  unless  they  really  were  very  con- 
siderable in  number,  unless  their  character  in  truth 
was  what  this  school  postulated  it  to  be — vigorous, 
young,  virtuous  and  all  the  rest  of  it — unless  there 
did  indeed  take  place  a  struggle  between  this  im- 
aginary great  German  nation  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean civilization,  in  which  the  former  won  and 
ruled  as  conquerors  over  subject  peoples;  unless 
these  primary  axioms  have  some  historical  truth 
in  them,  the  theory  which  is  deduced  from  them 
has  no  historical  value  whatsoever. 

A  man  may  have  a  preference,  as  a  Protestant 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  61 

or  merely  as  an  inhabitant  of  North  Germany  or 
Scandinavia,  for  the  type  of  man  who  originally 
lived  his  degraded  life  outside  the  Roman  Empire. 
He  may,  as  an  anti-Catholic  of  any  kind,  hope  that 
civilization  was  decadent  through  Catholicism  at 
the  end  of  the  united  Roman  Empire,  and  it  may 
please  him  to  imagine  that  the  coincidence  of  what 
was  originally  barbaric  with  what  is  now  Protes- 
tant German  Europe  is  a  proof  of  the  former's 
original  prowess.  Nay,  he  may  even  desire  that 
the  non-Catholic  and  non-traditional  type  in  our 
civilization  shall  attain  to  a  supremacy  which  it 
certainly  has  not  yet  reached.^  But  the  whole 
thing  is  only  a  pleasant  (or  unpleasant)  dream, 
something  to  imagine  and  not  something  to  dis- 
cover, unless  we  have  a  solid  historical  foundation 
for  the  theory:  to  wit,  the  destruction  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire  in  the  way  which,  and  by  the  men 
whom,  the  theory  presupposes. 

The  validity  of  the  whole  scheme  depends  upon 
our  answer  to  the  question,  "What  was  the  fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire?" 

'^f  it  was  a  conquest  such  as  we  have  just  seen 
postulated,  and  a  conquest  actuated  by  the  motives 
of  men  so  described,  then  this  old  anti-Catholic 
school,  though  it  could  not  maintain  its  exaggera- 
tions (though,  for  instance,  it  could  not  connect 
representative  institutions  with  the  German  bar- 
barians) would  yet  be  substantially  true. 

*I  wrote  that  phrase  before  the  break  up  of  Prussia  and  at  a 
moment  when  Prussia  was  still  the  idol  of  Oxford. 


62  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Now  the  moment  documents  began  to  be  seri- 
ously examined  and  compared,  the  moment  mod- 
ern research  began  to  approach  some  sort  of  final- 
ity in  the  study  of  that  period  wherein  the  United 
Roman  Empire  of  the  West  was  replaced  by  sun- 
dry local  Kingdoms,  students  of  history  thence- 
forward (and  in  proportion  to  their  impartiality) 
became  more  and  more  convinced  that  the  whole 
of  this  anti-Catholic  attitude  reposed  upon  noth- 
ing more  than  assertion. 

There  was  no  conquest  of  effete  Mediterranean 
peoples  by  vigorous  barbarians.  The  vast  number 
of  barbarians  who  lived  as  slaves  within  the  Em- 
pire, the  far  smaller  number  who  were  pressed  or 
hired  into  the  military  service  of  the  Empire,  the 
still  smaller  number  which  entered  the  Empire  as 
marauders,  during  the  weakness  of  the  Central 
Government  towards  its  end,  were  not  of  the  sort 
which  this  anti-Catholic  theory,  mistaking  its  de- 
sires for  realities,  pre-supposed. 

The  barbarians  were  not  "Germans"  (a  term 
difficult  to  define),  they  were  of  very  mixed  stocks 
which,  if  we  go  by  speech  (a  bad  guide  to  race) 
were  some  of  them  Germanic,  some  Slav,  some 
even  Mongol,  some  Berber,  some  of  the  old  un- 
named races:  the  Picts,  for  instance,  and  the  dark 
men  of  the  extreme  North  and  West. 

They  had  no  conspicuous  respect  for  women  of 
the  sort  which  should  produce  the  chivalric  ideal. 

They  were  not  free  societies,  but  slave-owning 
societies. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  63 

CThey  did  not  desire,  attempt,  or  even  dream,  the 
destruction  of  the  Imperial  power :  that  misfortune 
— which  was  gradual  and  never  complete — in  so 
far  as  it  came  about  at  all,  came  about  in  spite  of 
the  barbarians  and  not  by  their  conscious  effort., 

•  -They  were  not  numerous;  on  the  contrary,  they 
were  but  handfuls  of  men,  even  when  they  ap- 
peared as  successful  pillagers  and  raiders  over  the 
frontiers.  When  they  came  in  large  numbers,  they 
were  wiped  out. 

They  did  not  introduce  any  new  institutions  or 
any  new  ideas. 

Again,  you  do  not  find,  in  that  capital  change 
from  the  old  civilization  to  the  Dark  Ages,  that  the 
rise  of  legend  and  of  the  romantic  and  adventur- 
ous spirit  (the  sowing  of  the  modern  seed)  coin- 
cides with  places  where  the  great  mass  of  barbaric 
slaves  are  settled,  or  where  the  fewer  barbaric  pil- 
lagers or  the  regular  barbaric  soldiers  in  the  Ro- 
man Army  pass.  Romance  appears  hundreds  of 
years  later,  and  it  appears  more  immediately  and 
earliest  in  connection  with  precisely  those  districts 
in  which  the  passage  of  the  few  Teutonic,  Slavonic 
and  other  barbarians  had  been  least  felt. 

There  is  no  link  between  barbaric  society  and 
the  feudalism  of  the  Middle  Ages;  there  is  no  trace 
of  such  a  link.  There  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  very 
definite  and  clearly  marked  historical  sequence  be- 
tween Roman  civilization  and  the  feudal  system, 
attested  by  innumerable  documents  which,  once 
read  and  compared  in  their  order,  leave  no  sort  of 


64  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

doubt  that  feudalism  and  the  mediaeval  civilization 
repose  on  purely  Roman  origins. 
Qn  a  word,  the  gradual  cessation  of  central  Im- 
perial rule  in  Western  Europe,  the  failure  of  the 
power  and  habit  of  one  united  organization  seated 
in  Rome  to  color,  define  and  administrate  the  lives 
of  men,  was  an  internal  revolution;  it  did  not  come 
from  without.  It  was  a  change  from  within;  it 
was  nothing  remotely  resembling  an  external,  still 
less  a  barbaric,  conquest  from  without. 

All  that  happened  was  that  Roman  civilization 
having  grown  very  old,  failed  to  maintain  that 
vigorous  and  universal  method  of  local  govern- 
ment subordinated  to  the  capital,  which  it  had  for 
four  or  five  hundred  years  supported.  The  ma- 
chinery of  taxation  gradually  weakened;  the  whole 
of  central  bureaucratic  action  weakened;  the 
greater  men  in  each  locality  began  to  acquire  a 
sort  of  independence,  and  sundry  soldiers  bene- 
fited by  the  slow  (and  enormous)  change,  occu- 
pied the  local  "palaces"  as  they  were  called,  of 
Roman  administration,  secured  such  revenues  as 
the  remains  of  Roman  taxation  could  give  them, 
and,  conversely,  had  thrust  upon  them  so  much  of 
the  duty  of  government  as  the  decline  of  civiliza- 
tion could  still  maintain.  That  is  what  happened, 
and  that  is  all  that  happened. 

As  an  historical  phenomenon  it  is  what  I  have 
called  it — enormous.  It  most  vividly  struck  the 
imagination  of  men.  The  tremors  and  the  occa- 
sional local  cataclysms  which  were  the  symptoms 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  65 

of  this  change  of  base  from  the  old  high  civiliza- 
tion to  the  Dark  Ages,  singularly  impressed  the 
numerous  and  prolific  writers  of  the  time.  Their 
terrors,  their  astonishment,  their  speculations  as 
to  the  result,  have  come  down  to  us  highly  empha- 
sized. ,We  feel  after  all  those  centuries  the  shock 
which  was  produced  on  the  literary  world  of  the 
day  by  Alaric's  sack  of  Rome,  or  by  the  march  of 
the  Roman  auxiliary  troops  called  "Visigoths" 
through  Gaul  into  Spain,  or  by  the  appearance  of 
the  mixed  horde  called — after  their  leaders — 
"Vandals"  in  front  of  Hippo  in  Africa.  But  what 
we  do  not  feel,  what  we  do  not  obtain  from  the  con- 
temporary documents,  what  was  a  mere  figment 
of  the  academic  brain  in  the  generation  now  just 
passing  away,  is  that  anti-Catholic  and  anti-civil- 
ized bias  which  would  represent  the  ancient  civili- 
zation as  conquered  by  men  of  another  and  of  a 
better  stock  who  have  since  developed  the  supreme 
type  of  modern  civilization,  and  whose  contrast 
with  the  Catholic  world  and  Catholic  tradition  is 
at  once  applauded  as  the  principle  of  life  in  Europe 
and  emphasized  as  the  fundamental  fact  in  Euro- 
pean history. 

The  reader  will  not  be  content  with  a  mere  atfir- 
mation,  though  the  affirmation  is  based  upon  all 
that  is  worth  counting  in  modern  scholarship.  He 
will  ask  what,  then,  did  really  happen?  After  all, 
Alaric  did  sack  Rome.  The  Kings  of  the  Franks 
were  Belgian  chieftains,  probably  speaking  (at 
first)  Flemish  as  well  as  Latin.     Those  of  the  Bur- 


66  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

gundians  were  probably  men  who  spoke  that  hotch- 
potch of  original  barbaric,  Celtic  and  Roman  words 
later  called  "Teutonic  dialects,"  as  well  as  Latin. 
The  military  officers  called  (from  the  original  re- 
cruitment of  their  commands)  "Goths,"  both  east- 
ern and  western,  were  in  the  same  case.  Even 
that  mixed  mass  of  Slav,  Berber,  escaped  slaves 
and  the  rest  which,  from  original  leaders  was 
called  in  North  Africa  "Vandal,"  probably  had 
some  considerable  German  nucleus. 

The  false  history  has  got  superficial  ground  to 
work  upon.  Many  families  w^hose  origins  came 
from  what  is  now  German-speaking  Central  Europe 
ruled  in  local  government  during  the  transition, 
and  distinct  though  small  tribes,  mainly  German 
in  speech,  survived  for  a  short  time  in  the  Empire. 
Like  all  falsehood,  the  falsehood  of  the  "Teutonic 
theory"  could  not  live  ^vithout  an  element  of  truth 
to  distort,  and  it  is  the  business  of  anyone  w^ho  is 
writing  true  history,  even  in  so  short  an  essay  as 
this,  to  show  what  that  ground  was  and  how  it 
has  been  misrepresented. 

In  order  to  understand  what  happened  we  must 
first  of  all  clearly  represent  to  ourselves  the  fact 
that  the  structure  upon  which  our  united  civiliza- 
tion had  in  its  first  five  centuries  reposed,  was  the 
Roman  Army.  By  which  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
number  of  soldiers  was  very  large  compared  with 
the  civilian  population,  but  that  the  organ  which 
was  vital  in  the  State,  the  thing  that  really  counted, 
the  institution  upon  which  men's  minds  turned, 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  67 

and  which  they  thought  of  as  the  foundation  of  all, 
was  the  military  institution. 

The  original  city-state  of  the  Mediterranean 
broke  down  a  little  before  the  beginning  of  our  era. 

When  (as  always  ultimately  happens  in  a  com- 
plex civilization  of  many  millions)  self-government 
had  broken  down,  and  when  it  was  necessary,  after 
the  desperate  faction  fights  which  that  breakdown 
had  produced,  to  establish  a  strong  centre  of  au- 
thority, the  obvious  and,  as  it  were,  necessary  per- 
son to  exercise  that  authority  (in  a  State  consti- 
tuted as  was  the  Roman  State)  was  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief of  the  army;  all  that  the  word 
"Emperor" — the  Latin  word  Imperator — means,  is 
a  commander-in-chief. 

It  was  the  Army  which  made  and  unmade  Em- 
perors; it  was  the  Army  which  designed  and  or- 
dered and  even  helped  to  construct  the  great  roads 
of  the  Empire.  It  was  in  connection  with  the 
needs  of  the  Army  that  those  roads  were  traced. 
It  was  the  Army  which  secured  (very  easily,  for 
peace  was  popular)  the  civil  order  of  the  vast  or- 
ganism. It  was  the  Army  especially  which 
guarded  its  frontiers  against  the  uncivilized  world 
without;  upon  the  edge  of  the  Sahara  and  of  the 
Arabian  desert;  upon  the  edge  of  the  Scotch  moun- 
tains; upon  the  edge  of  the  poor,  wild  lands  be- 
tween the  Rhine  and  Elbe.  On  those  frontiers  the 
garrisons  made  a  sort  of  wall  within  which  wealth 
and  right  living  could  accumulate,  outside  which 
small  and  impoverished  bodies  of  men  destitute  of 


68  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  arts  (notably  of  writing)  save  in  so  far  as  they 
rudely  copied  the  Romans  or  were  permeated  by 
adventurous  Roman  commerce,  lived  under  condi- 
tions which,  in  the  Celtic  hills,  we  can  partially  ap- 
preciate from  the  analogy  of  ancient  Gaul  and  from 
tenacious  legends,  but  of  which  in  the  German  and 
Slavonic  sand-plains,  marshes  and  woods  we  know 
hardly  anything  at  all. 

Now  this  main  instrument,  the  Roman  Army — 
the  instrument  remember,  which  not  only  pre- 
served civil  functions,  but  actually  created  the 
master  of  all  civic  functions,  the  Government — 
went  through  three  very  clear  stages  of  change  in 
the  first  four  centuries  of  the  Christian  era — up  to 
the  year  A.  D.  400  or  so.  And  it  is  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  Roman  Army  during  the  first  four  cen- 
turies which  explains  the  otherwise  inexplicable 
change  in  society  just  afterwards,  in  the  fifth  and 
sixth  centuries— that  is,  from  400  to  600  A.  D. 
The  turn  from  the  full  civilization  of  Rome  to  the 
beginning  of  the  Dark  Ages. 

In  its  first  stage,  during  the  early  Empire,  just 
as  the  Catholic  Church  was  founded  and  was  be- 
ginning to  grow,  the  Roman  Army  was  still  theo- 
retically an  army  of  true  Roman  citizens.2 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Army  was  already  prin- 

»A  soldier  was  still  technically  a  citizen  up  to  the  very  end. 
The  conception  of  a  soldier  as  a  citizen,  the  impossibility,  for 
Instance,  of  his  LeinK  a  slave,  was  in  the  very  bones  of  Roman 
thought.  Even  when  the  soldiers  were  almost  entirely  recruited 
from  barbarians,  that  is,  from  slave  stock,  the  soldiers  them- 
selves were  free  clUzens  always. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  69 

cipally  professional,  and  it  was  being  recruited 
even  in  this  first  stage  very  largely  from  the  terri- 
tories Rome  had  conquered. 

jThus  we  have  Caesar  raising  a  Gallic  legion  al- 
most contemporaneous  with  his  conquest  of  Gaul. 
But  for  a  long  time  after,  well  into  the  Christian 
era,  the  Army  was  conceived  of  in  men's  minds  as 
a  sort  of  universal  institution  rooted  in  the  citizen- 
ship which  men  w^ere  still  proud  to  claim  through- 
out the  Empire,  and  which  belonged  only  to  a  mi- 
nority of  its  inhabitants;  for  the  majority  were 
slaves.- 

In  the  second  phase  (which  corresponded  with 
the  beginning  of  a  decline  in  letters  and  in  the  arts, 
which  carries  us  through  the  welter  of  civil  wars 
in  the  third  century  and  which  introduces  the  re- 
modeled Empire  at  their  close)  the  Army  was  be- 
coming purely  professional  and  at  the  same  time 
drawn  from  whatever  was  least  fortunate  in  Ro- 
man society.  The  recruitment  of  it  was  treated 
much  after  the  fashion  of  a  tax;  the  great  landed 
proprietors  (who,  by  a  parallel  development  in  the 
decline,  were  becoming  the  chief  economic  feature 
in  the  Roman  State)  were  summoned  to  send  a 
certain  number  of  recruits  from  their  estates. 

Slaves  would  often  be  glad  to  go,  for,  hard  as 
were  the  conditions  of  military  service,  it  gave 
them  civic  freedom,  certain  honors,  a  certain  pay. 
and  a  future  for  their  children.  The  poorer  freed 
men  would  also  go  at  the  command  of  their  lord 
(though  only  of  course  a  certain  proportion — for 


70  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  conscription  was  very  light  compared  with 
modern  systems,  and  was  made  lighter  by  reenlist- 
ment,  long  service,  absence  of  reserves,  and  the  use 
of  veterans). 

During  this  second  stage,  while  the  Army  was 
becoming  less  and  less  civic,  and  more  and  more  a 
profession  for  the  destitute  and  the  unfortunate, 
the  unpopularity  and  the  ignorance  of  military 
service  among  the  rest  of  the  population  was  in- 
creasing. The  average  citizen  grew  more  and 
more  divorced  from  the  Army  and  knew  less  and 
less  of  its  conditions.  He  came  to  regard  it  partly 
as  a  necessary  police  force  or  defence  of  his  fron- 
tiers, partly  as  a  nuisance  to  him  at  home.  He 
also  came  to  regard  it  as  something  with  which 
he  had  nothing  to  do.  It  lived  a  life  separate  from 
himself.  It  governed  (through  the  power  of  the 
Emperor,  its  chief) ;  it  depended  on,  and  also  sup- 
ported or  re-made,  the  Imperial  Court.  But  it  was 
external,  at  the  close  of  the  Empire,  to  general 
society. 

Recruiting  was  meanwhile  becoming  difficult, 
and  the  habit  grew  up  of  offering  the  hungry  tribes 
outside  the  pale  of  the  Empire  the  advantage  of 
residence  within  it  on  condition  that  they  should 
serve  as  Roman  soldiers. 

The  conception  of  territories  within  the  Empire 
which  were  affiliated  and  allied  to  it  rather  than 
absorbed  by  it,  was  a  very  ancient  one.  That  con- 
ception had  lost  reality  so  far  as  the  old  territories 
it  had  once  affected  were  concerned;  but  it  paved 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  71 

the  way  for  the  parallel  idea  of  troops  affiliated  and 
allied  to  the  Roman  Army,  part  of  that  army  in 
discipline  and  organization,  yet  possessed  of  con- 
siderable freedom  within  their  own  divisions. 

Here  we  have  not  only  a  constant  and  increasing 
uSe  of  barbaric  troops  drafted  into  the  regular 
corps,  but  also  whole  bodies  which  were  more  and 
more  frequently  accepted" en  bloc'* and,  under  their 
local  leaders,  as  auxiliaries  to  the  Roman  forces. 

Some  such  bodies  appear  to  have  been  settled 
upon  land  on  the  frontiers,  to  others  were  given 
similar  grants  at  very  great  distances  from  the 
frontiers.  Thus  we  have  a  small  body  of  German 
barbarians  settled  at  Rennes  in  Brittany.  And, 
again,  within  the  legions  (who  were  all  technically 
of  Roman  citizenship  and  in  theory  recruited  from 
the  full  civilization  of  Rome),  the  barbarian  who 
happened  to  find  himself  within  that  civilization 
tended  more  than  did  his  non-barbarian  fellow 
citizen  (or  fellow  slave)  to  accept  military  service. 
He  would  nearly  always  be  poorer;  he  would,  un- 
less his  experience  of  civilization  was  a  long  one, 
feel  the  hardship  of  military  service  less;  and  in 
this  second  phase,  while  the  army  was  becoming 
more  sedentary  (more  attached,  that  is,  to  particu- 
lar garrisons),  more  permanent,  more  of  an  heredi- 
tary thing  handed  on  from  father  to  son,  and  dis- 
tinguished by  the  large  element  of  what  we  call 
"married  quarters,"  it  was  also  becoming  more  and 
more  an  army  of  men  who,  whether  as  auxiliaries 
or  as  true  Roman  soldiers,  were  in  blood,  descent, 


72  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

and  to  some  extent  in  manners  and  less  in  lan- 
guage, barbarians.  There  were  negroes,  there 
were  probably  Celts,  there  were  Slavs,  Mongols  of 
the  Steppes,  more  numerous  Germans,  and  so 
forth. 

In  the  third  stage,  which  is  the  stage  that  saw 
the  great  convulsion  of  the  fifth  century,  the  army 
though  not  yet  wholly  barbaric,  had  already  be- 
come in  its  most  vital  part,  barbaric.  It  took 
its  orders,  of  course,  wholly  from  the  Roman  State, 
but  great  groups  within  it  were  only  partly  even 
Latin-speaking  or  Greek-speaking,  and  were  cer- 
tainly regarded  both  by  themselves  and  by  their 
Roman  masters  as  non-Roman  in  manners  and  in 
blood. 

It  must  most  clearly  be  emphasized  that  not  only 
no  such  thought  as  an  attack  upon  the  Empire 
entered  the  heads  of  these  soldiers,  but  that  the 
very  idea  of  it  would  have  been  inconceivable  to 
them.  Had  you  proposed  it  they  would  not  even 
have  known  what  you  meant.  That  a  particular 
section  of  the  army  should  fight  against  a  particu- 
lar claimant  to  the  Empire  (and  therefore  and  nec- 
essarily in  favor  of  some  other  claimant)  they 
thought  natural  enough;  but  to  talk  of  an  attack 
upon  the  Empire  itself  would  have  seemed  to  them 
like  talking  of  an  attack  upon  bread  and  meat,  air, 
water  and  iire.  The  Empire  was  the  whole 
method  and  meaning  of  their  lives. 

At  intervals  the  high  and  wealthy  civilization 
of  the  Roman  Empire  was,  of  course,  subjected  to 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  73 

attempted  pillage  by  small  and  hungry  robber 
bands  without  its  boundaries,  but  that  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  barbaric  recruitment  of  the  Roman 
Army  save  when  such  bands  were  caught  and  in- 
corporated. The  army  was  always  ready  at  a  mo- 
ment's order  to  cut  such  foreign  raiders  to  pieces 
— and  always  did  so  successfully. 

The  portion  of  the  Army  chosen  to  repel,  cut  up, 
and  sell  into  slavery  a  marauding  band  of  Slavs  or 
Germans  or  Celts,  always  had  Celts  or  Slavs  or 
Germans  present  in  large  numbers  among  its  own 
soldiery.  But  no  tie  of  blood  interfered  with  the 
business.  To  consider  such  a  thing  would  have 
been  inconceivable  to  the  opponents  on  either  side. 
\The  distinction  was  not  between  speech  and 
speech,  still  less  between  vague  racial  customs.  It 
was  a  distinction  between  the  Imperial  Service  on 
the  one  side,  against  the  outer,  unrecognized,  sav- 
age on  the  other. 

As  the  machinery  of  Government  grew  weak 
through  old  age,  and  as  the  recruitment  of  the 
Army  from  barbarians  and  the  large  proportion  of 
auxiliary  regular  forces  began  to  weaken  that  basis 
of  the  whole  State,  the  tendency  of  pillaging  bands 
to  break  in  past  the  frontiers  into  the  cultivated 
lands  and  the  wealth  of  the  cities,  grew  greater  and 
greater;  but  it  never  occurred  to  them  to  attack 
the  Empire  as  such.  All  they  wanted  was  per- 
mission to  enjoy  the  life  which  was  led  within  it, 
and  to  abandon  the  wretched  conditions  to  which 
they  were  compelled  outside  its  boundaries. 


74  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Sometimes  they  were  transformed  from  pillagers 
to  soldiers  by  an  offer  extended  by  the  Roman  au- 
thorities; more  often  they  snatched  a  raid  when 
there  was  for  the  moment  no  good  garrison  in  their 
neighborhood.  Then  a  Roman  force  would  march 
against  them,  and  if  they  were  not  quick  at  getting 
away  would  cut  them  to  pieces.  But  with  the 
progress  of  the  central  decline  the  attacks  of  these 
small  bands  on  the  frontiers  became  more  fre- 
quent. Frontier  towns  came  to  regard  such  at- 
tacks as  a  permanent  peril  and  to  defend  them- 
selves against  them.  Little  groups  of  raiders 
would  sometimes  traverse  great  districts  from  end 
to  end,  and  whether  in  the  form  of  pirates  from  the 
sea  or  of  war  bands  on  land,  the  ceaseless  attempts 
to  enjoy  or  to  loot  (but  principally  to  enjoy)  the 
conditions  that  civilization  offered,  grew  more  and 
more  persistent. 

It  must  not  be  imagined,  of  course,  that  civiliza- 
tion had  not  occasionally  to  suffer  then,  as  it  had 
had  to  suffer  at  intervals  for  a  thousand  years  past, 
the  attacks  of  really  large  and  organized  barbaric 
armies.3  Thus  in  the  year  404,  driven  by  the 
pressure  of  an  Eastern  invasion  upon  their  own 
forests,  a  vast  barbaric  host  under  one  Radagasius 
pushed  into  Italy.  The  men  bearing  arms  alone 
were  estimated  (in  a  time  well  used  to  soldiery 
and  to  such  estimates)  at  200,000. 

*For  instance,  a  century  and  a  half  before  the  breakdowTi  of 
central  Government,  the  Goths,  a  barbaric  group,  largely  German, 
had  broken  in  and  ravaged  in  a  worse  fashion  than  their  suc- 
cessors in  the  fifth  century. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  75 

But  those  200,000  were  wiped  out.  The  bar- 
barians were  always  wiped  out  when  they  at- 
tempted to  come  as  conquerors.  Stilicho  (a  typi- 
cal figure,  for  he  was  himself  of  barbarian  descent, 
yet  in  the  regular  Roman  service)  cut  to  pieces  one 
portion  of  them,  the  rest  surrendered  and  were 
sold  off  and  scattered  as  slaves. 

Immediately  afterwards  you  have  a  violent  quar- 
rel between  various  soldiers  who  desire  to  capture 
the  Imperial  power.  The  story  is  fragmentary  and 
somewhat  confused:  now  one  usurper  is  blamed, 
and  now  another,  but  the  fact  common  to  all  is 
that  with  the  direct  object  of  usurping  power  a 
Roman  General  calls  in  barbarian  bands  of  pil- 
lagers (all  sorts  of  small  groups,  Franks,  Suevians, 
Vandals)  to  cross  the  Rhine  into  Gaul,  not  as  bar- 
barian "conquerors,"  but  as  allies,  to  help  in  a  civil 
war. 

The  succeeding  generation  has  left  us  ample  evi- 
dence of  the  results.  It  presents  us  with  docu- 
ments that  do  not  give  a  picture  of  a  ruined  prov- 
ince by  any  means;  only  of  a  province  which  has 
been  traversed  in  certain  directions  by  the 
march  of  barbarian  robber  bands,  who  after- 
wards disappeared,  largely  in  fighting  among 
themselves. 

We  have,  later,  the  very  much  more  serious  busi- 
ness of  the  Mongol  Attila  and  his  Huns,  leading  the 
great  outer  mass  of  Germans  and  Slavs  into  the 
Empire  on  an  enormous  raid.  In  the  middle  of 
the  fifth  century,  fifty  years  after  the  destruction 


76  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

of  Radagasius,  these  Asiatics,  leading  more  numer- 
ous other  barbaric  dependents  of  theirs  from  the 
Germanics  and  the  eastern  Slavonic  lands,  pene- 
trated for  two  brief  moments  into  Northern  Italy 
and  Eastern  Gaul.  The  end  of  that  business — in- 
finitely graver  though  it  was  than  the  raids  that 
came  before  it — is  just  what  one  might  have  ex- 
pected. The  regular  and  auxiliary  disciplined 
forces  of  the  Empire  destroy  the  barbarian  power 
near  Chalons,  and  the  last  and  worst  of  the  in- 
vasions is  wiped  out  as  thoroughly  as  had  been  all 
the  others. 

r  In  general,  the  barbaric  eruptions  into  the  Em- 
pire failed  wholly  as  soon  as  Imperial  troops  could 
be  brought  up  to  oppose  them. 

What,  then,  were  the  supposed  barbaric  suc- 
cesses? What  was  the  real  nature  of  the  action 
of  Alaric,  for  instance,  and  his  sack  of  Rome;  and 
how,  later,  do  we  find  local  "kings"  in  the  place  of 
the  Roman  Governors? 

The  real  nature  of  the  action  of  men  like  Alaric 
is  utterly  different  from  the  imaginary  picture  with 
which  the  old  picturesque  popular  history  recently 
provided  us.  That  false  history  gives  us  the  im- 
pression of  a  barbarian  Chieftain  gathering  his 
Clan  to  a  victorious  assault  on  Rome.  Consider 
the  truth  upon  Alaric  and  contrast  it  with  this 
imaginary  picture. 

Alaric  was  a  young  noble  of  Gothic  blood,  but 
from  birth  a  Roman;  at  eighteen  years  of  age  he 
was  put  by  the  Court  in  command  of  a  small  Ro- 


EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH  77 

man  auxiliary  force  originally  recruited  from  the 
Goths.  He  was  as  much  a  Roman  officer,  as  in- 
capable of  thinking  of  himself  in  any  other  terms 
than  those  of  the  Roman  Army,  as  any  other  one 
of  his  colleagues  about  the  throne.  He  had  his 
commission  from  the  Emperor  Theodosius,  and 
when  Theodosius  marched  into  Gaul  against  the 
usurper  Eugenius,  he  counted  Alaric's  division  as 
among  the  most  faithful  of  his  Army. 

|t  so  happened,  moreover,  that  those  few  orig- 
inal auxiliaries — mainly  Goths  by  race — were 
nearly  all  destroyed  in  the  campaign.  Alaric  sur- 
vived. The  remnant  of  his  division  was  recruited, 
we  know  not  how,  but  probably  from  all  kinds  of 
sources,  to  its  old  strength.  It  was  still  called 
"Gothic,"  though  now  of  the  most  mixed  origin, 
and  it  was  still  commanded  by  himself  in  his  char- 
acter of  a  Roman  General. 

Alaric,  after  this  service  to  the  Emperor,  was 
rewarded  by  further  military  dignities  in  the  Ro- 
man military  hierarchy.  He  was  ambitious  of 
military  titles  and  of  important  command,  as  are 
all  soldiers. 

Though  still  under  twenty  years  of  age  and  only 
a  commander  of  auxiliaries,  he  asks  for  the  title  of 
Magister  Militum,  with  the  dignity  which  accom- 
panied that  highest  of  military  posts.  The  Em- 
peror refuses  it.  One  of  the  Ministers  thereupon 
begins  to  plot  with  Alaric,  and  suggests  to  him  that 
he  might  gather  other  auxiliary  troops  under  his 
command,  and  make  things  uncomfortable  for  his 


78  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

superiors.  Alaric  rebels,  marches  through  the 
Balkan  Peninsula  into  Thessaly  and  Greece,  and 
down  into  the  Peloponesus;  the  regulars  march 
against  him  (according  to  some  accounts)  and 
beat  him  back  into  Albania. 

There  ends  his  first  adventure.  It  is  exactly  like 
that  of  a  hundred  other  Roman  generals  in  the 
past,  and  so  are  his  further  adventures.  He  re- 
mains in  Albania  at  the  head  of  his  forces,  and 
makes  peace  with  the  Government — still  enjoying 
a  regular  commission  from  the  Emperor. 

He  next  tries  a  new  adventure  to  serve  his  ambi- 
tion in  Italy,  but  his  army  is  broken  to  pieces  at 
Pollentia  by  the  armies  in  Italy — under  a  general, 
by  the  way,  as  barbaric  in  mere  descent  as  was 
Alaric,  but,  like  Alaric,  wholly  Roman  in  training 
and  ideas. 

The  whole  thing  is  a  civil  war  between  various 
branches  of  the  Roman  service,  and  is  motived, 
like  all  the  Roman  civil  wars  for  hundreds  of  years 
before,  by  the  ambitions  of  generals. 

Alaric  does  not  lose  his  commission  even  after 
his  second  adventure;  he  begins  to  intrigue  be- 
tween the  Western  and  Eastern  heads  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire.  The  great  invasion  under  Radaga- 
sius  interrupts  this  civil  war.  That  invasion  was 
for  Alaric,  of  course,  as  for  any  other  Roman  offi- 
cer, an  invasion  of  barbaric  enemies.  That  these 
enemies  should  be  called  by  this  or  that  barbaric 
name  is  quite  indifferent  to  him.  They  come  from 
outside  the  Empire  and  are  therefore,  in  his  eyes, 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  79 

cattle.     He  helps  to  destroy  them,  and  destroyed 
they  are — promptly  and  thoroughly. 

When  the  brief  invasion  was  over,  Alaric  had  the 
opportunity  to  renev^r  the  civil  wars  within  the  Em- 
pire, and  asked  for  certain  arrears  of  pay  that 
were  due  to  him.  Stilicho,  the  great  rival  general 
(himself,  by  the  way,  a  Vandal  in  descent),  ad- 
mitted Alaric's  right  to  arrears  of  pay,  but  just  at 
that  moment  there  occurred  an  obscure  palace 
intrigue  which  was  based,  like  all  the  real  move- 
ments of  the  time,  on  differences  of  religion,  not  of 
race.  Stilicho,  suspected  of  attempting  to  restore 
paganism,  is  killed.  In  the  general  confusion  cer- 
tain of  the  families  of  the  auxiliaries  garrisoned  in 
Italy  are  massacred  by  the  non-military  population. 
As  Alaric  is  a  general  in  partial  rebellion  against 
the  Imperial  authority,  these  auxiliaries  join  him. 

The  total  number  of  Alaric's  men  was  at  this 
moment  very  small;  they  were  perhaps  30,000. 
There  was  no  trace  of  nationality  about  them. 
They  were  simply  a  body  of  discontented  soldiers; 
they  had  not  come  from  across  th«  frontier;  they 
were  not  invaders;  they  were  part  of  the  long  estab- 
lished and  regular  garrisons  of  the  Empire;  and, 
for  that  matter,  many  garrisons  and  troops  of 
equally  barbaric  origin,  sided  with  the  regular 
authorities  in  the  quarrel.  Alaric  marches  on 
Rome  with  this  disaffected  Roman  Army,  claiming 
that  he  has  been  defrauded  of  his  due  in  salary, 
and  leaning  upon  the  popularity  of  the  dead 
Stilicho,   whose   murder  he   says  he   will   avenge. 


80  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

His  thirty  thousand  claim  the  barbarian  slaves 
within  the  city,  and  certain  sums  of  money  which 
had  been  the  pretext  and  motive  of  his  rebellion. 

As  a  result  of  this  action  the  Emperor  promises 
Alaric  his  regular  salary  as  a  general,  and  a  district 
which  he  may  not  only  command,  but  plant  with 
his  few  followers.  Even  in  the  height  of  his  suc- 
cess, Alaric  again  demands  the  thing  which  was 
nearest  his  heart,  the  supreme  and  entirely  Ro- 
man title  of  Magister  Militum,  the  highest  post  in 
the  hierarchy  of  military  advancement.  But  the 
Emperor  again  refuses  to  give  that.  Alaric  again 
marches  on  Rome,  a  Roman  officer  followed  by  a 
rebellious  Roman  Army.  He  forces  the  Senate  to 
make  Attains  nominal  Emperor  of  the  West,  and 
Attains  to  give  him  the  desired  title,  his  very  crav- 
ing for  which  is  most  significant  of  the  Roman 
character  of  the  whole  business.  Alaric  then 
quarrels  with  his  puppet,  deprives  him  of  the  in- 
signia of  the  Empire,  and  sends  them  to  Honorius ; 
quarrels  again  with  Honorius,  reenters  Rome  and 
pillages  it,  marches  to  Southern  Italy,  dies,  and 
his  small  army  is  dismembered. 

There  is  the  story  of  Alaric  as  it  appears  from 
documents  and  as  it  was  in  reality.  There  is  the 
truth  underlying  the  false  picture  with  which  most 
educated  men  were  recently  provided  by  the  anti- 
Roman  bias  of  recent  history. 

Certainly  the  story  of  Alaric's  discontent  with 
his  salary  and  the  terms  of  his  commission,  his 
raiding  marches,  his  plunder  of  the  capital,  shows 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  81 

how  vastly  different  was  the  beginning  of  the  fifth 
century  from  the  society  of  three  hundred  years 
before.  It  is  sj^mptomatic  of  the  change,  and  it 
could  only  have  been  possible  at  a  moment  when 
central  government  was  at  last  breaking  down. 
But  it  is  utterly  different  in  motive  and  in  social 
character  from  the  vague  customary  conception  of 
a  vast  barbarian  "invasion,"  led  by  a  German 
"war  lord"  pouring  over  the  Alps  and  taking  Ro- 
man society  and  its  capital  by  storm.  It  has  no 
relation  to  such  a  picture. 

If  all  this  be  true  of  the  dramatic  adventure  of 
Alaric,  which  has  so  profoundly  affected  the  imag- 
ination of  mankind,  it  is  still  truer  of  the  other 
contemporary  events  which  false  history  might 
twist  into  a  "conquest"  of  the  Empire  by  the  bar- 
barian. 

There  was  no  such  conquest.  All  that  happened 
was  an  internal  transformation  of  Roman  societj', 
in  which  the  chief  functions  of  local  government 
fell  to  the  heads  of  local  auxiliary  forces  in  the  Ro- 
man Army.  As  these  auxiliary  forces  were  now 
TOiainly  barbaric,  so  were  the  personalities  of  the 
new  local  governors. 

I  have  only  dealt  with  the  particular  case  of 
Alaric  because  it  is  the  most  familiar,  and  the  most 
generally  distorted :  a  test,  as  it  were,  of  my  theme. 

But  what  is  true  of  him  is  true  of  all  other 
auxiliaries  in  the  Armies — even  of  the  probably 
Slavonic  Vandals.  These  did  frankly  loot  a  prov- 
ince— North  Africa — and  they  (and  they  alone  of 


82  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  auxiliary  troops)  did  revolt  against  the  Im- 
perial system  and  defy  it  for  a  century:  but  the 
Vandals  themselves  were  already,  before  their  ad- 
venture, a  part  of  the  Imperial  forces;  they  were 
but  a  nucleus  for  a  mixed  host  made  up  of  all  the 
varied  elements  of  rebellion  present  in  the  country; 
and  their  experiment  in  separation  went  down  at 
last  forever  before  the  Imperial  armies.  Mean- 
while the  North  African  society  on  which  the  rebels 
lived,  and  which,  with  their  various  recruits- 
Moors,  escaped  slaves,  criminals — they  maladmin- 
istered  and  half  ruined,  was  and  remained  Roman. 

In  the  case  of  local  Italian  government  the  case 
is  quite  clear.  There  was  never  any  question  of 
"invasion"  or  "conquest." 

Odoacer  held  a  regular  Roman  commission;  he 
was  a  Roman  soldier:  Theodoric  supplanted  him 
by  leave  of,  and  actually  under  orders  from,  the 
Emperor.  The  last  and  greatest  example,  the 
most  permanent,  Gaul,  tells  the  same  story.  The 
Burgundians  are  auxiliaries  regularly  planted 
after  imploring  the  aid  of  the  Empire  and  permis- 
sion to  settle.  Clovis,  the  Belgian  Fleming,  fights 
no  Imperial  Army.  His  forebears  were  Roman 
officials:  his  little  band  of  perhaps  8,000  men  was 
victorious  in  a  small  and  private  civil  war  which 
made  him  Master  in  the  North  over  other  rival 
generals.  He  defended  the  Empire  against  the 
Eastern  barbaric  German  tribes.  He  rejoiced  in 
the  titles  of  Consul  and  Patrician. 

There    was    no   destruction    of   Roman    society. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  83 

there  was  no  breach  of  continuity  in  the  main  insti- 
tutions of  what  was  now  the  Western  Christian 
world;  there  was  no  considerable  admixture  (in 
these  local  civil  wars)  of  German,  Slav,  or  outer 
Celtic  blood — no  appreciable  addition  at  least  to 
the  large  amount  of  such  blood  which,  through  the 
numerous  soldiers  and  much  more  numerous 
slaves,  had  already  been  incorporated  with  the 
population  of  the  Roman  world. 

But  in  the  course  of  this  transformation  in  the 
fifth  and  sixth  centuries  local  government  did  fall 
into  the  hands  of  those  who  happened  to  command 
the  main  local  forces  of  the  Roman  Army,  and 
these  were  by  descent  barbarian  because  the  Army 
had  become  barbarian  in  its  recruitment. 

Why  local  government  gradually  succeeded  the 
old  centralized  Imperial  Government,  and  how,  in 
consequence,  there  slowly  grew  up  the  modern  na- 
tions, we  will  next  examine. 


IV 

The  Beginning  of  the  Nations 

European  civilization,  which  the  Catholic  Church 
has  made  and  makes,  is  by  that  influence  still  one. 
Its  unity  now  (as  for  three  hundred  years  past)  is 
suffering  from  the  grievous  and  ugly  wound  of  the 
Reformation.  The  earlier  wounds  have  been 
healed;  that  modern  wound  we  hope  may  still  be 
healed — we  hope  so  because  the  alternative  is 
death.  At  any  rate  unity,  wounded  or  un- 
wounded,  is  still  the  mark  of  Christendom. 

That  unity  today  falls  into  national  groups. 
Those  of  the  West  in  particular  are  highly  differ- 
entiated. Gaul  (or  France  as  we  now  call  it)  is  a 
separate  thing.  The  Iberian  or  Spanish  Peninsula 
(though  divided  into  five  particular,  and  three  main, 
regions,  each  with  its  language,  of  which  one, 
Portugal,  is  politically  independent  of  the  rest)  is 
another.  The  old  European  and  Roman  district 
of  North  Africa  is  but  partially  re-occupied  by 
European  civilization.  Italy  has  quite  recently  ap- 
peared as  another  united  national  group.  The 
/Roman  province  of  England  has  (south  of  the 
border)  formed  one  united  nation  for  a  longer 
period  than  any  of  the  others.  To  England  Scot- 
land has  been  added. 

84 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  85 

'  How  did  these  modern  nations  arise  in  the  trans- 
formation of  the  Roman  Empire  from  its  old 
simple  pagan  condition  to  one  complex  Christian 
civilization?  How  came  there  to  be  also  nations 
exterior  to  the  Empire;  old  nations  like  Ireland, 
new  nations  like  Poland?  We  must  be  able  to 
answer  this  question  if  we  are  to  understand,  not 
only  that  European  civilization  has  been  continu- 
ous (that  is,  one  in  time  as  well  as  one  in  spirit 
and  in  place),  but  also  if  we  are  to  know  why  and 
how  that  continuity  was  preserved.  For  one  we 
are  and  will  be,  all  Europeans.  The  moment 
something  threatens  our  common  morals  from 
within,  we  face  it,  however  tardily.  We  have  for- 
gotten what  it  is  to  feel  a  threat  from  without: 
but  it  may  come. 

We  are  already  familiar  with  the  old  popular 
and  false  explanation  of  the  rise  of  the  European 
nations.  This  explanation  tells  us  that  great  num- 
bers of  vigorous  barbarians  entered  the  Roman 
Empire,  conquered  it,  established  themselves 
as  masters,  and  parceled  out  its  various 
provinces. 

We  have  seen  that  such  a  picture  is  fantastic 
and,  when  it  is  accepted,  destroys  a  man's  historic 
sense  of  Europe. 

We  have  seen  that  the  barbarians  who  burst 
through  the  defence  of  civilization  at  various  times 
(from  before  the  beginnings  of  recorded  history; 
through  the  pagan  period  prefacing  Our  Lord's 
birth;  during  the  height  of  the  Empire  proper,  in 


86  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  third  century;  again  in  the  fourth  and  the 
fifth)  never  had  the  power  to  affect  that  civiliza- 
tion seriously,  and  therefore  were  invariably  con- 
quered and  easily  absorbed.  It  was  in  the  nat- 
ural course  of  things  this  should  be  so. 

I  say  "in  the  natural  course  of  things."  Dread- 
ful as  the  irruption  of  barbarians  into  civilized 
places  must  always  be,  even  on  a  small  scale,  the 
conquest  of  civilization  by  barbarians  is  always 
and  necessarily  impossible.  Barbarians  may  have 
the  weight  to  destroy  the  civilization  they  enter, 
and  in  so  doing  to  destroy  themselves  with  it. 
But  it  is  inconceivable  that  they  should  impose 
their  view  and  manner  upon  civilized  men.  Now 
to  impose  one's  view  and  manner,  dare  leges  (to 
give  laws),  is  to  conquer. 

Moreover,  save  under  the  most  exceptional  con- 
ditions, a  civilized  army  with  its  training,  disci- 
pline and  scientific  traditions  of  war,  can  always 
ultimately  have  the  better  of  a  horde.  In  the  case 
of  the  Roman  Empire  the  armies  of  civilization 
did,  as  a  fact,  always  have  the  better  of  the  bar- 
barian hordes,  Marius  had  the  better  of  the  bar- 
barians a  hundred  years  before  Our  Lord  was 
born,  though  their  horde  was  not  broken  until  it 
had  suffered  the  loss  of  200,000  dead.  Five  hun- 
dred years  later  the  Roman  armies  had  the  better 
of  another  similar  horde  of  barbarians,  the  host  of 
Radagasius,  in  their  rush  upon  Italy;  and  here 
again  the  vast  multitude  lost  some  200,000  killed 
or  sold  into  slavery.     We  have  seen  how  the  Ro- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITR  87 

man  generals,  Alaric  and  the  others,  destroyed 
them. 

But  we  have  also  seen  that  within  the  Roman 
Army  itself  certain  auxiliary  troops  (which  may 
have  preserved  to  some  slight  extent  traces  of  their 
original  tribal  character,  and  probably  preserved 
for  a  generation  or  so  a  mixture  of  Roman  speech, 
camp  slang,  and  the  original  barbaric  tongues) 
assumed  greater  and  greater  importance  in  the  Ro- 
man Army  towards  the  end  of  the  imperial  period 
— that  is,  towards  the  end  of  the  fourth,  and  in  the 
beginning  of  the  fifth,  centuries  (say,  350-450). 

We  have  seen  why  these  auxiliary  forces  con- 
tinued to  increase  in  importance  within  the  Roman 
Army,  and  we  have  seen  how  it  was  only  as  Ro- 
man soldiers,  and  as  part  of  the  regular  forces  of 
civilization,  that  they  had  that  importance,  or  that 
their  officers  and  generals,  acting  as  Roman  offi- 
cers and  generals,  could  play  the  part  they  did. 

The  heads  of  these  auxiliary  forces  were  invari- 
ably men  trained  as  Romans.  They  knew  of  no 
life  save  that  civilized  life  which  the  Empire  en- 
joyed. They  regarded  themselves  as  soldiers  and 
politicians  of  the  State  in  which — not  against 
which — they  warred.  They  acted  wholly  within 
the  framework  of  Roman  things.  The  auxiliaries 
had  no  memory  or  tradition  of  a  barbaric  life  be- 
yond the  Empire,  though  their  stock  in  some  part 
sprang  from  it;  they  had  no  liking  for  barbarism, 
and  no  living  communication  with  it.  The  auxil- 
iary soldiers  and  their  generals  lived  and  thought 


88  EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH 

entirely  within  those  imperial  boundaries  which 
guarded  paved  roads,  a  regular  and  stately  archi- 
tecture, great  and  populous  cities,  the  vine,  the 
olive,  the  Roman  law  and  the  bishoprics  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  Outside  was  a  wilderness  with 
which  they  had  nothing  to  do. 

Armed  with  this  knowledge  (which  puts  an  end 
to  any  fantastic  theory  of  barbarian  "conquest"), 
let  us  set  out  to  explain  that  state  of  affairs  which 
a  man  born,  say,  a  hundred  years  after  the  last  of 
the  mere  raids  into  the  Empire  was  destroyed 
under  Radagasius,  would  have  observed  in  middle 
age. 

Sidonius  Apollinaris,  the  famous  Bishop  of 
Clermont-Ferrand,  lived  and  wrote  his  classical 
work  at  such  a  date  after  Alaric's  Roman  adventure 
and  Radagasius'  defeat  that  the  life  of  a  man  would 
span  the  distance  between  them;  it  was  a  matter 
of  nearly  seventy  years  between  those  events  and 
his  maturity.  A  grandson  of  his  would  correspond 
to  such  a  spectator  as  we  are  imagining;  a  grand- 
son of  that  generation  might  be  born  before  the 
year  500.  Such  a  man  would  have  stood  towards 
Radagasius'  raid,  the  last  futile  irruption  of  the 
barbarian,  much  as  men,  old  today,  in  England, 
stand  to  the  Indian  Mutiny  and  the  Crimean  War, 
to  the  second  Napoleon  in  France,  to  the  Civil  War 
in  the  United  States.  Had  a  grandson  of  Sidonius 
traveled  in  ^taly,  Spain  and  Gaul  in  his  later 
years,  this  is  what  he  would  have  seen: 

In  all  the  great  towns  Roman  life  was  going  on 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  89 

as  it  had  always  gone  on,  so  far  as  externals  were 
concerned.  The  same  Latin  speech,  now  some- 
what degraded,  the  same  dress,  the  same  division 
into  a  minority  of  free  men,  a  majority  of  slaves, 
and  a  few  very  rich  masters  round  whom  not  only 
the  slaves  but  the  mass  of  the  free  men  also  were 
grouped  as  dependents. 

In  every  city,  again,  he  would  have  found  a 
Bishop  of  the  Catholic  Church,  a  member  of  that 
hierarchy  which  acknowledged  its  centre  and 
headship  to  be  at  Rome.  Everywhere  religion,  and 
especially  the  settlement  of  divisions  and  doubts 
in  religion,  would  have  been  the  main  popular 
preoccupation.  And  everywhere  save  in  Northern 
Gaul  he  would  have  perceived  small  groups  of  men, 
wealthy,  connected  with  government,  often  bearing 
barbaric  names,  and  sometimes  (perhaps)  still 
partly  acquainted  with  barbaric  tongues.  Now 
these  few  men  were  as  a  rule  of  a  special  set  in 
religion.  They  were  called  Arians;  heretics  who 
differed  in  religion  from  the  mass  of  their  fellow 
citizens  very  much  as  the  minority  of  Protestants 
in  an  Irish  county  today  differ  from  the  great  mass 
of  their  Catholic  fellows;  and  that  was  a  point  of 
capital  importance. 

The  little  provincial  courts  were  headed  by  men 
who,  though  Christian  (with  the  Mass,  the  Sacra- 
ments and  all  Christian  things),  were  yet  out  of 
communion  with  the  bulk  of  their  officials  and  all 
their  taxpayers.  They  had  inherited  that  odd  posi- 
tion from  an  accident  in  the  Imperial  history.    At 


90  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  moment  when  their  grandfathers  had  received 
Baptism  the  Imperial  Court  had  supported  this 
heresy.  They  had  come,  therefore,  by  family  tra- 
dition, to  regard  their  separate  sect  (with  its  at- 
tempt to  rationalize  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarna- 
tion) as  a  "swagger."  They  thought  it  an  odd 
title  to  eminence.  And  this  little  vanity  had  two 
effects.  It  cut  them  off  from  the  mass  of  their 
fellow  citizens  in  the  Empire.  It  made  their  ten- 
ure of  power  uncertain  and  destined  to  disappear 
very  soon  at  the  hands  of  men  in  sympathy  with 
the  great  Catholic  body — the  troops  led  by  the  local 
governors  of  Northern  France. 

We  shall  return  to  this  matter  of  Arianism. 
But  just  let  us  follow  the  state  of  society  as  our 
grandson  of  Sidonius  would  have  seen  it  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Dark  Ages. 

The  armed  forces  he  might  have  met  upon  the 
roads  as  he  traveled  would  have  been  rare;  their 
accoutrements,  their  discipline,  their  words  of 
command,  were  still,  though  in  a  degraded  form, 
those  of  the  old  Roman  Army.  There  had  been 
no  breach  in  the  traditions  of  that  Army  or  in  its 
corporate  life.  Many  of  the  bodies  he  met  would 
still  have  borne  the  old  imperial  insignia. 

The  money  which  he  handled  and  with  which  he 
paid  his  bills  at  the  inns,  was  stamped  with  the 
effigy  of  the  reigning  Emperor  at  Byzantium,  or 
one  of  his  predecessors,  just  as  the  traveler  in  a 
distant  British  colony  today,  though  that  prov- 
ince  is    virtually   independent,   will   handle   coins 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  91 

stamped  with  the  eflBgies  of  English  Kings.  But 
though  the  coinage  was  entirely  imperial,  he 
would,  upon  a  passport  or  a  receipt  for  toll  and 
many  another  official  document  he  handled,  often 
see  side  by  side  with  and  subordinate  to  the  im- 
perial name,  the  name  of  the  chief  of  the  local 
government. 

This  phrase  leads  me  to  a  feature  in  the  sur- 
rounding society  which  we  must  not  exaggerate, 
but  which  made  it  very  different  from  that  united 
and  truly  "Imperial"  form  of  government  which 
had  covered  all  civilization  two  hundred  to  one 
hundred  years  before. 

The  descendants  of  those  officers  who  from  two 
hundred  to  one  hundred  years  before  had  only 
commanded  regular  or  auxiliary  forces  in  the  Ro- 
man Army,  were  now  seated  as  almost  independent 
local  administrators  in  the  capitals  of  the^Rgrrian 
provinces. 

They  still  thought  of  themselves,  in  550,  say,  as 
mere  provincial  powers  within  the  one  great  Em- 
pire of  Rome.  But  there  was  now  no  positive 
central  power  remaining  in  Rome  to  control  them. 
The  central  power  was  far  off  in  Constantinople. 
It  was  universally  accepted,  but  it  made  no  at- 
tempt to  act. 

Let  us  suppose  our  traveler  to  be  concerned  in 
some  commerce  which  brought  him  to  the  centres 
of  local  government  throughout  the  Western  Em- 
pire. Let  him  have  to  visit  Paris,  Toledo,  Ra- 
venna,  Aries.       He   has,   let   us   say,   successfully 


92  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

negotiated  some  business  in  Spain,  which  has 
necessitated  his  obtaining  official  documents.  He 
must,  that  is,  come  into  touch  with  officials  and 
with  the  actual  Government  in  Spain.  Two  hun- 
dred years  before  he  would  have  seen  the  officials 
of,  and  got  his  papers  from,  a  government  directly 
dependent  upon  Rome.  The  name  of  the  Em- 
peror alone  would  have  appeared  on  all  the  papers 
and  his  effigy  on  the  seals.  Now,  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury, the  papers  are  made  out  in  the  old  official 
way  and  (of  course)  in  Latin,  all  the  public  forces 
are  still  Roman,  all  the  civilization  has  still  the 
same  unaltered  Roman  character;  has  anything 
changed  at  all? 

Let  us  see. 

To  get  his  papers  in  the  Capital  he  will  be  di- 
rected to  the  ''Palatium,"  This  word  does  not 
mean  "Palace," 

When  we  say  "palace"  today  we  mean  the  house 
in  which  lives  the  real  or  nominal  ruler  of  a  mon- 
archical state.  We  talk  of  Buckingham  Palace, 
St.  James'  Palace,  the  Palace  in  Madrid,  and  so  on. 

But  the  original  word  Palatium  had  a  very  dif- 
ferent meaning  in  late  Roman  society.  It  signified 
the  official  seat  of  Government,  and  in  particular 
the  centre  from  which  the  writs  for  Imperial  taxa- 
tion were  issued,  and  to  which  the  proceeds  of  that 
taxation  were  paid.  The  name  was  originally 
taken  from  the  Palatine  Hill  in  Rome,  on  which 
the  Caesars  had  their  private  house.  As  the  mask 
of  private  citizenship  was  gradually  thrown  off  by 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  93 

the  Emperors,  six  hundred  to  five  hundred  years 
before,  and  as  the  comrnanders-in-cliief  of  the  Ro- 
man Army  became  more  and  more  true  and  abso- 
lute sovereigns,  their  house  became  more  and  more 
the  official  centre  of  the  Empire. 

The  term  "PalatiuirC'  thus  became  consecrated 
to  a  particular  use.  When  the  centre  of  Imperial 
power  was  transferred  to  Byzantium  the  word 
*'PaIatmm"  followed  it;  and  at  last  it  was  applied 
to  local  centres  as  well  as  to  the  Imperial  city.  In 
the  laws  of  the  Empire  then,  in  its  dignities  and 
honors,  in  the  whole  of  its  official  life,  the  Palatiiim 
means  the  machine  of  government,  local  or  im- 
perial. Such  a  traveler  as  we  have  imagined  in 
the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  comes,  then,  to 
that  Spanish  Palatium  from  which,  throughout  the 
five  centuries  of  Imperial  rule,  the  Spanish  Penin- 
sular had  been  locally  governed.  What  would  he 
find? 

He  would  find,  to  begin  with,  a  great  staff  of 
clerks  and  officials,  of  exactly  the  same  sort  as 
had  always  inhabited  the  place,  drawing  up  the 
same  sort  of  documents  as  they  had  drawn  up 
for  generations,  using  certain  fixed  formulae,  and 
doing  everything  in  the  Latin  tongue.  No  local 
dialect  was  yet  of  the  least  importance.  But  he 
would  also  find  that  the  building  was  used  for  acts 
of  authority,  and  that  these  acts  were  performed 
in  the  name  of  a  certain  person  (who  was  no 
longer  the  old  Roman  Governor)  and  his  Council. 
It  was  this  local  person's  name,  rather  than  the 


94  EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH 

Emperor's,  which  usually — or  at  any  rate  more 
and  more  frequently — appeared  on  the  documents. 
/Let  us  look  closely  at  this  new  person  seated  in 
authority  over  Spain,  and  at  his  Council :  for  from 
such  men  as  he,  and  from  the  districts  they  ruled, 
the  nations  of  our  time  and  their  royal  families 
were  to  spring. 

The  first  thing  that  would  be  noticed  on  enter- 
ing the  presence  of  this  person  w^ho  governed 
Spain,  would  be  that  he  still  had  all  the  insignia 
and  manner  of  Roman  Government. 

He  sat  upon  a  formal  throne  as  the  Emperor's 
delegate  had  sat:  the  provincial  delegate  of  the 
Emperor.  On  official  occasions  he  would  wear 
the  official  Roman  garments:  the  orb  and  the 
sceptre  were  already  his  symbols  (we  may  pre- 
sume) as  they  had  been  those  of  the  Emperor  and 
the  Emperor's  local  subordinates  before  him.  But 
in  two  points  this  central  official  differed  from  the 
old  local  Governor  whom  he  exactly  succeeded, 
and  upon  whose  machinery  of  taxation  he  relief 
for  power. 

These  two  points  were,  first,  that  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  very  powerful  and  somewhat  jealous 
body  of  Great  Men;  secondly,  that  he  did  not 
habitually  give  himself  an  imperial  Roman  title, 
but  was  called  Rex. 

Let  us  consider  these  points  separately. 
( As  to  the  first  point,  the  Emperor  in  Byzantium, 
and  before  that  in  Rome  or  at  Ravenna,  worked, 
as   even   absolute   power   must   work,   through   a 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  95 

multitude  of  men.  He  was  surrounded  by  high 
dignitaries,  and  there  devolved  from  him  a  whole 
hierarchy  of  officials,  with  the  most  important  of 
whom  he  continually  consulted.  But  the  Em- 
peror had  not  been  officially  and  regularly  bound 
in  with  such  a  Council.  His  formulae  of  ad- 
ministration were  personal  formulae.  Now  and 
then  he  mentioned  his  great  officials,  but  he  only 
mentioned  them  if  he  chose. 

This  new  local  person,  who  had  been  very  grad- 
ually and  almost  unconsciously  substituted  for  the 
old  Roman  Governors,  the  Rex,  was,  on  the  con- 
trary, a  part  of  his  own  Council,  and  all  his  for- 
mulae of  administration  mentioned  the  Council  as 
his  coadjutors  and  assessors  in  administration. 
This  was  necessary  above  all  (a  most  important 
point)  in  anything  that  regarded  the  public  funds. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  for  a  moment  that  the 
Rex  issued  laws  or  edicts,  or  (what  was  much 
more  common  and  much  more  vital)  levied  taxa- 
tion under  the  dominion  of,  or  subject  to  the  con- 
sent of,  these  great  men  about  him.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  spoke  as  absolutely  as  ever  the  Imperial 
Governors  had  done  in  the  past,  and  indeed  he 
could  not  do  otherwise  because  the  whole  machin- 
ery he  had  inherited  presupposed  absolute  power. 
But  some  things  were  already  said  to  be  done 
"with"  these  great  men:  and  it  is  of  capital  impor- 
tance that  we  should  note  this  word  "with."  The 
phrases  of  the  official  documents  from  that  time 
run  more  and  more  in  one  of  half-a-dozen  regular 


96  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

formulae,  all  of  which  are  based  upon  this  idea  of 
the  Council  and  are  in  general  such  words  as  these: 
"So  and  so,  Rex,  ordered  and  commanded  (with 
his  chief  men)  that  so  and  so  .  .  .  should  be 
do^e." 

As  to  the  second  point;  we  note  the  change  of 
title.  The  authority  of  the  Palatium  is  a  Rex; 
not  a  Legate  nor  a  Governor,  nor  a  man  sent  from 
the  Emperor,  nor  a  man  directly  and  necessarily 
nominated  by  him,  but  a  Rex.  Now  what  is  the 
meaning  of  that  word  Rex? 

It  is  usually  translated  by  our  word  "King." 
But  it  does  not  here  mean  anything  like  what  our 
word  "King"  means  when  we  apply  it  today — or  as 
we  have  applied  it  for  many  centuries.  It  does  not 
mean  the  ruler  of  a  large  independent  territory. 
It  means  a  combination  of  two  things  when  it  is 
used  to  name  these  local  rulers  in  the  later  Roman 
Empire.  It  means  (1)  The  chieftain  of  an  auxil- 
iary group  of  soldiers  who  holds  an  Imperial  com- 
mission: and  it  means  (2)  That  man  acting  as  a 
local  governor. 

Centuries  and  centuries  before,  indeed  a  thou- 
sand years  before,  the  word  Rex  had  meant  the 
chieftain  of  the  little  town  and  petty  surrounding 
district  of  Rome  or  of  some  similar  neighboring 
and  small  state.  It  had  in  the  Latin  language  al- 
ways retained  some  such  connotation.  The  word 
"Rex"  was  often  used  in  Latin  literature  as  we  use 
the  word  "King"  in  English:  i.  e.,  to  describe  the 
head  of  a  state  great  or  small.     But  as  applied  to 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  97 

the  local  rulers  of  the  fifth  century  in  Western 
Europe,  it  was  not  so  used.  It  meant,  as  I  have 
said.  Chieftain  or  Chief  oflRcer  of  auxiliaries.  A 
Rex  was  not  then,  in  Spain,  or  in  Gaul,  a  King  in 
our  modern  sense  of  the  word:  he  was  only  the 
military  head  of  a  particular  armed  force.  He  was 
originally  the  commander  (hereditary  or  chosen 
or  nominated  by  the  Emperor)  of  an  auxiliary 
force  serving  as  part  of  the  Roman  Army.  Later, 
when  these  troops — originally  recruited  perhaps 
from  some  one  barbaric  district — changed  by  slow 
degrees  into  a  body  half  police,  half  noble,  their 
original  name  would  extend  to  the  whole  local 
army.  The  "Rex"  of,  say,  Batavian  auxiliaries, 
the  commander  of  the  Batavian  Corps,  would  prob- 
ably be  a  man  of  Batavian  blood,  with  hereditary 
position  and  would  be  called  "Rex  Bataviorum." 
Afterwards,  when  the  recruiting  was  mixed,  he 
still  kept  that  title  and  later  still,  when  the  Batavii, 
as  such,  had  disappeared,  his  fixed  title  would 
remain. 

\jrhere  was  no  similarity  possible  between  the 
word  Rex  and  the  word  Imperatar,  any  more  than 
there  is  between  the  words  "Miners'  Union"  or 
"Trade  Conference"  and  the  word  "England." 
There  was,  of  course,  no  sort  of  equality.  A  Ro- 
man General  in  the  early  part  of  the  process  plan- 
ning a  battle  would  think  of  a  Rex  as  we  think 
of  a  Divisionary  General.  He  might  say:  "I  shall 
put  my  regulars  here  in  the  centre.  My  auxil- 
iaries  (Huns  or  Goths  or  Franks  or  >*iiat  not)   I 


98  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

shall  put  here.  Send  for  their  'Rex'  and  I  will 
give  him  his  orders." 

A  Rex  in  this  sense  was  a  subject  and  often  an 
unimportant  subject  of  the  Imperator  or  Emperor: 
the  Imperator  being,  as  we  remember,  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief of  the  Roman  Army,  upon  which 
institution  the  Roman  State  or  Empire  or  civiliza- 
tion had  depended  for  so  many  centuries. 

When  the  Roman  Army  began  to  add  to  itself 
auxiliary  troops  (drilled  of  course  after  the  Roman 
fashion  and  forming  one  body  with  the  Roman 
forces,  but  contracted  for  "in  bulk,"  as  it  were)  the 
chieftains  of  these  barbaric  and  often  small  bodies 
were  called  in  the  official  language,  Reges.  Thus 
Alaric,  a  Roman  officer  and  nothing  more,  was  the 
Rex  of  his  officially  appointed  auxiliary  force;  and 
since  the  nucleus  of  that  force  had  once  been  a 
small  body  of  Goths,  and  since  Alaric  held  his  posi- 
tion as  an  officer  of  that  auxiliary  force  because 
he  had  once  been,  by  inheritance,  a  chieftain  of 
the  Goths,  the  word  Rex  was  attached  to  his  Im- 
perial Commission  in  the  Roman  Army,  and  there 
was  added  to  it  the  name  of  that  particular  bar- 
baric tribe  with  which  his  command  had  originally 
been  connected.  He  was  Rex  of  the  Roman  auxil- 
iary troops  called  "Goths."  The  "Rex"  in  Spain 
was  "Rex  Gotorum,"  not  "Rex  Hispanix" — that 
was  altogether  a  later  idea.  The  Rex  in  Northern 
France  was  not  Rex  Galliae,  he  was  "Rex  Fran- 
coTumy  In  each  case  he  was  the  Rex  of  the  par- 
ticular auxiliary  troop  from  which  his  ancestors — 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  99 

sometimes  generations  before — had  originally 
drawn  their  Imperial  Commission  and  their  right 
to  be  officers  in  the  Roman  Army. 

Thus  you  will  have  the  Rex  Francorum,  or  King 
of  the  Franks,  so  styled  in  the  Palatium  at  Paris, 
as  late  as,  say,  700  A.  D.  Not  because  any  body 
of  "Franks"  still  survived  as  a  separate  corps — 
they  had  been  but  a  couple  of  regiments  or  so^ 
two  hundred  years  before  and  had  long  dis- 
appeared— but  because  the  original  title  had  de- 
rived from  a  Roman  auxiliary  force  of  Franks. 

In  other  words,  the  old  Roman  local  legislative 
and  taxing  power,  the  reality  of  which  lay  in  the 
old  surviving  Roman  machinery  of  a  hierarchy 
of  officials  with  their  titles,  writs,  etc.,  was  vested 
in  the  hands  of  a  man  called  "Rex,"  that  is,  "Com- 
mander" of  such  and  such  an  auxiliary  force; 
Commander  of  the  Franks,  for  instance,  or  Com- 
mander of  the  Goths.  He  still  commanded  in  the 
year  550  a  not  very  large  military  force  on  which 
local  government  depended,  and  in  this  little  army 
the  barbarians  were  still  probably  predominant 
because,  as  we  have  seen,  towards  the  end  of  the 
Empire  the  slufT  of  the  army  had  become  barbaric 
and  the  armed  force  was  mainly  of  barbaric  re- 
cruitment. But  that  small  military  force  was  also, 
and  as  certainly,  very  mixed  indeed;  many  a 
slave   or  broken   Roman   freedman  would   enlist, 


»We  have  documentary  record.  The  greater  part  of  the  Prank- 
ish auxiliaries  under  Clovis  were  baptized  with  their  Generiil. 
They  came  to  4,000  men. 


100  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

for  it  had  privileges  and  advantages  of  great  value ;* 
no  one  cared  in  the  least  whether  the  members  of 
the  armed  forces  which  sustained  society  were 
Roman,  Gallic,  Italian  or  German  in  racial  origin. 
They  were  of  all  races  and  origins.  Very  shortly 
after — by,  say,  600,  at  latest^ — the  Army  had  be- 
come a  universal  rough  levy  of  all  sorts  and  kinds, 
and  the  restriction  of  race  was  forgotten  save  in  a 
few  customs  still  clinging  by  hereditary  right  to 
certain  families  and  called  their  "laws." 

Again,  there  was  no  conception  of  rebellion 
against  the  Empire  in  the  mind  of  a  Rex.  All 
these  Reges  without  exception  held  their  military 
oflBce  and  power  originally  by  a  commission  from 
the  Empire.  All  of  them  derived  their  authority 
from  men  who  had  been  regularly  established  as 
Imperial  functionaries.  When  the  central  power 
of  the  Emperor  had,  as  a  fact,  broken  down,  the 
Rex  as  a  fact  administered  the  whole  machinery 
without  control. 

But  no  Rex  ever  tried  to  emancipate  himself  from 
the  Empire  or  warred  for  independence  against  the 
Emperor.  The  Rex,  the  local  man,  undertook  all 
government  simply  because  the  old  Government 
above  him,  the  central  Government,  had  failed. 
No  Rex  ever  called  himself  a  local  Imperator  or 


'Hence  the  "leges"  or  codes  specially  regulating  the  status  of 
these  Roman  troops  ant!  called  in  documents  the  laws  of  the 
"Goths"  or  "Burgundians,"  as  the  case  may  be.  There  is  a 
trace  of  old  barbaric  customs  in  some  of  these,  sometimes  of  an 
exclusive  rule  of  marriage;  but  the  mass  of  them  are  obviously 
Roman  privileges. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  101 

dreamed  of  calling  himself  so;  and  that  is  the  most 
significant  thing  in  all  the  transition  between  the 
full  civilization  of  the  old  Empire  and  the  Dark 
Ages.  The  original  Roman  armies  invading  Gaul, 
Spain,  the  western  Germanies  and  Hungary,  fought 
to  conquer,  to  absorb,  to  be  masters  of  and  makers 
of  the  land  they  seized.  No  local  governor  of  the 
later  transition,  no  Rex  of  Vandal,  Goth,  Hun, 
Frank  or  Berber  or  Moor  troop  ever  dreamt  of  such 
a  thing.  He  might  fight  another  local  Rex  to  get 
part  of  his  taxing-power  or  his  treasure.  He  might 
take  part  in  the  great  religious  quarrels  (as  in 
Africa)  and  act  tyrannically  against  a  dissident 
majority,  but  to  fight  against  the  Empire  as  such 
or  to  attempt  conquest  and  rule  over  a  "subject 
population"  would  have  meant  nothing  to  him;  in 
theory  the  Empire  was  still  under  one  control. 

There,  then,  you  have  the  picture  of  what  held 
the  levers  of  the  machine  of  government  during 
the  period  of  its  degradation  and  transformation, 
which  followed  the  breakdown  of  central  authority. 
Clovis,  in  the  north  of  France,  the  Burgundian 
chieftain  at  Aries,  Theodoric  in  Italy,  Athanagild 
later  at  Toledo  in  Spain,  were  all  of  them  men 
who  had  stepped  into  the  shoes  of  an  unbroken 
local  Roman  administration,  who  worked  entirely 
by  it,  and  whose  machinery  of  administration 
wherever  they  went  was  called  by  the  Roman  and 
official  name  of  Palaiium. 

Their  families  were  originally  of  barbaric  stock: 
thev  had  for  their  small  armed  forces  a  military 


102  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

institution  descended  and  derived  from  the  Roman 
auxiliary  forces;  often,  especially  in  the  early 
years  of  their  power,  they  spoke  a  mixed  and  partly 
barbaric  tongue'  more  easily  than  pure  Latin;  but 
every  one  of  them  was  a  soldier  of  the  declining 
Empire  and  regarded  himself  as  a  part  of  it,  not 
as  even  conceivably  an  enemy  of  it. 

When  we  appreciate  this  we  can  understand  how 
insignificant  were  those  changes  of  frontier  which 
make  so  great  a  show  in  historical  atlases. 

The  Rex  of  such  and  such  an  auxiliary  force  dies 
and  divides  his  "kingdom"  between  two  sons. 
What  does  that  mean?  Not  that  a  nation  with 
its  customs  and  its  whole  form  of  administration 
was  suddenly  divided  into  two,  still  less  that  there 
has  been  what  today  we  call  "annexation"  or  "par- 
tition" of  states.  It  simply  means  that  the  honor 
and  advantage  of  administration  are  divided  be- 
tween the  two  heirs,  who  take,  the  one  the  one 
area,  the  other  the  other,  over  which  to  gather 
taxes  and  to  receive  personal  profit.  It  must  al- 
ways be  remembered  that  the  personal  privilege  so 
received  was  very  small  in  comparison  with  the 
total  revenue  to  be  administrated,  and  that  the  vast 
mass  of  public  work  as  carried  on  by  the  judiciary, 
the  officers  of  the  Treasury  and  so  forth,  continued 
to  be  quite  impersonal  and  fundamentally  impe- 

^The  barbaric  dialects  outside  the  Empire  were  already  largely 
latinized  through  commerce  with  the  Empire  and  by  its  influ- 
ence, and,  of  course,  what  we  call  "Teutonic  Languages"  are  io 
reality  half  Roman,  long  before  we  get  our  flrst  full  document* 
In  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries. 


EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH  103 

rial.  This  governmental  world  of  clerks  and  civil 
servants  lived  its  own  life  and  was  only  in  theory 
dependent  upon  the  Rex,  and  the  Rex  was  no  more 
than  the  successor  of  the  chief  local  Roman 
official.* 

The  Rex,  by  the  wdiy,  called  himself  always  by 
some  definite  inferior  Roman  title,  such  as  Vir 
lUuster,  as  an  Englishman  today  might  be  called 
"Sir  Charles  So  and  So"  or  "Lord  So  and  So,"  never 
anything  more;  and  often  (as  in  the  case  of 
Clovis),  he  not  only  accepted  directly  from  the 
Roman  Emperor  a  particular  ofTice,  but  observed 
the  old  popular  Roman  customs  such  as,  largesse 
and  procession,  upon  his  induction  into  that  office. 

Now  why  did  not  this  man,  this  Rex,  in  Italy  or 
Gaul  or  Spain,  simply  remain  in  the  position  of 
local  Roman  Governor?  One  would  imagine,  if 
one  did  not  know  more  about  that  society,  that  he 
should  have  done  this. 

The  small  auxiliary  forces  of  which  he  had  been 
chieftain  rapidly  merged  into  the  body  of  the  Em- 
pire, as  had  the  infinitely  larger  mass  of  slaves  and 
colonists,  equally  barbarian  in  origin,  for  century 
after  century  before  that  time.  The  body  of  civili- 
zation was  one,  and  we  wonder,  at  first,  why  its 
moral  unity  did  not  continue  to  be  represented  by 
a  central  Monarch.     Though  the  civilization  con- 

*Our  populai'  historical  atlases  render  a  very  bad  service  to 
education  by  their  way  of  coloring  these  districts  as  though 
they  were  separate  modern  nations.  The  real  division  right  up 
to  full  tide  of  feudalism  was  Christian  and  Pagan,  and,  withio 
the  former,  Eastern  and  Western :    Greek  and  Latin, 


104  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

tinued  to  decline,  its  forms  should,  one  would 
think,  have  remained  unchanged  and  the  theo- 
retic attachment  of  each  of  these  subordinates  to 
the  Roman  Emperor  at  Constantinople  should  have 
endured  indefinitely.  As  a  fact,  the  memory  of 
the  old  central  authority  of  the  Emperor  was  grad- 
ually forgotten;  the  Rex  and  his  local  government 
as  he  got  weaker  also  got  more  isolated.  He  came 
to  coining  his  own  money,  to  treating  directly  as 
a  completely  independent  ruler.  At  last  the  idea 
of  "kings"  and  "kingdoms"  took  shape  in  men's 
minds.     Why? 

The  reason  that  the  nature  of  authority  very 
slowly  changed,  that  the  last  links  with  the  Roman 
Empire  of  the  East — that  is,  with  the  supreme 
head  at  Constantinople — gradually  dissolved  in  the 
West,  and  that  the  modern  nation  arose  around 
these  local  governments  of  the  Reges,  is  to  be 
found  in  that  novel  feature,  the  standing  Council 
of  great  men  around  the  Rex,  with  whom  every- 
thing is  done. 

This  standing  Council  expresses  three  forces, 
which  between  them  were  transforming  society. 
Those  three  forces  were :  first,  certain  vague  under- 
lying national  feelings,  older  than  the  Empire, 
Gallic,  Rrittanic,  Iberian;  secondly,  the  economic 
force  of  the  great  Roman  landowners,  and,  lastly, 
the  living  organization  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

On  the  economic,  or  material,  side  of  society, 
the  great  landowners  were  the  reality  of  that  time. 

We  have  no  statistiC'i  to  go  upon.     But  the  facts 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  105 

of  the  time  and  the  nature  of  its  institutions  are 
quite  as  cogent  as  detailed  statistics.  In  Spain, 
in  Gaul,  in  Italy,  as  in  Africa,  economic  power  had 
concentrated  into  the  hands  of  exceedingly  few 
men.  A  few  hundred  men  and  women,  a  few 
dozen  corporations  (especially  the  episcopal  sees) 
had  come  to  own  most  of  the  land  on  which 
these  millions  and  millions  lived;  and,  with 
the  land,  most  of  the  implements  and  of  the 
slaves. 

As  to  the  descent  of  these  great  landowners  none 
asked  or  cared.  By  the  middle  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury only  a  minority  perhaps  were  still  of  un- 
mixed blood,  but  quite  certainlj-^  none  were  purely 
barbaric.  Lands  waste  or  confiscated  through  the 
decline  of  population  or  the  effect  of  the  intermin- 
able wars  and  the  plagues,  lay  in  the  power  of  the 
Palatium,  which  granted  them  out  again  (strictly 
under  the  eye  of  the  Council  of  Great  Men)  to  new 
holders. 

The  few  who  had  come  in  as  original  followers 
and  dependents  of  the  "chieftain"  of  the  auxiliary 
forces  benefited  largely;  but  the  thing  that  really 
concerns  the  story  of  civilization  is  not  the  origin 
of  these  immensely  rich  owners  (which  was 
y mixed),  nor  their  sense  of  race  (which  simply  did 
not  exist),  but  the  fact  that  they  were  so  few.  It 
explains  both  what  happened  and  what  was  to 
happen. 

That  a  handful  of  men,  for  they  were  no  more 
than  a  handful,  should  thus  be  in  control  of  the" 


106  EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH 

economic  destinies  of  mankind — the  result  of  cen- 
turies of  Roman  development  in  that  direction— is 
the  key  to  all  the  material  decline  of  the  Empire, 
i  It  should  furnish  us,  if  we  were  wise,  with  an  ob- 
ject lesson  for  our  own  politics  today. 

The  decline  of  the  Imperial  power  was  mainly 
due  to  this  extraordinary  concentration  of  economic 
power  in  the  hands  of  a  few.  It  was  these  few 
great  Roman  landowners  who  in  every  local  gov- 
ernment endowed  each  of  the  new  administrators, 
each  new  Rex,  with  a  tradition  of  imperial  power, 
not  a  little  of  the  dread  that  went  with  the  old  im- 
perial name,  and  the  armed  force  which  it  con- 
noted: everywhere  the  Rex  had  to  reckon  with  the 
strength  of  highly  concentrated  wealth.  This  was 
the  first  element  in  that  standing  "Council  of  Great 
Men"  which  was  the  mark  of  the  time  in  every 
locality  and  wore  down  the  old  official,  imperial, 
absolute,  local  power. 

There  was,  however,  as  I  have  said,  another  and 
a  much  more  important  element  in  the  Council  of 
Great  Men,  besides  the  chief  landowners;  it  con- 
sisted of  the  Hierarchy  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

Every  Roman  city  of  that  time  had  a  principal 
personage  in  it,  who  knew  its  life  better  than  any- 
body else,  who  had,  more  than  anyone  else,  power 
over  its  morals  and  ideas,  and  who  in  many  cases 
\  actually  administered  its  affairs.  That  person  was 
the  Bishop. 

Throughout  Western  Europe  at  that  moment 
men's  interest  and  preoccupation  was  not  race  nor 
/ 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  107 

even  material  prosperity,  but  religion.  The  great 
duel  between  Paganism  and  the  Catholic  Church 
was  now  decided,  after  two  hard  centuries  of 
struggle,  in  favor  of  the  latter.  The  Catholic 
Church,  from  a  small  but  definite  and  very  tena- 
cious organization  within  the  Empire,  and  on  the 
whole  antagonistic  to  it,  had  risen,  first,  to  be  the 
onlj^  group  of  men  which  knew  its  own  mind  (200 
A.  D.) ;  next  to  be  the  official  religion  (300  A.  D.) ; 
finally  to  be  the  cohesive  political  principle  of  the 
great  majority  of  human  beings  (400  A.  D.). 

The  modern  man  can  distinctly  appreciate  the 
phenomenon,  if  for  "creed"  he  will  read  "capital," 
and  for  the  "Faith,"  "industrial  civilization."  For 
just  as  today  men  principally  care  for  great  for- 
tunes, and  in  pursuit  of  them  go  indifferently  from 
country  to  country,  and  sink,  as  unimportant  com- 
pared with  such  an  object,  the  other  businesses  of 
our  time,  so  the  men  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  cen- 
turies were  intent  upon  the  unity  and  exactitude 
of  religion.  That  the  religion  to  which  the  Em- 
pire was  now  converted,  the  religion  of  the  Catho- 
lic Church,  should  triumph,  was  their  one  pre- 
occupation. For  this  they  exiled  themselves;  for 
this  they  would  and  did  run  great  risks;  as  minor 
to  this  they  sank  all  other  things. 

The  Catholic  hierarchy  with  its  enormous  power 
at  that  moment,  civil  and  economic  as  well  as  re- 
ligious, was  not  the  creator  of  such  a  spirit,  it  was 
only  its  leader.  And  in  connection  with  that  in- 
tense preoccupation  of  men's  minds,  two  factors 


108  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

already  appear  in  the  fourth  century  and  are  in- 
creasingly active  through  the  fifth  and  sixth.  The 
first  is  the  desire  that  the  living  Church  should  be 
as  free  as  possible;  hence  the  Catholic  Church  and 
its  ministers  everywhere  welcome  the  growth  of 
local  as  against  centralized  power.  They  do  so 
unconsciously  but  none  the  less  strongly.  The 
second  factor  is  Arianism:  to  which  I  now  return. 

Arianism,  which  both  in  its  material  success  and 
in  the  length  of  its  duration,  as  well  as  in  its  con- 
cept of  religion,  and  the  character  of  its  demise, 
is  singularly  parallel  to  the  Protestant  movement 
of  recent  centuries,  had  sprung  up  as  the  official 
and  fashionable  Court  heresy  opposed  to  the 
orthodoxy  of  the  Church. 

The  Emperor's  Court  did  indeed  at  last — after 
many  variations — abandon  it,  but  a  tradition  sur- 
vived till  long  after  (and  in  many  places)  that 
Arianism  stood  for  the  "wealthy"  and  "respect- 
able" in  life. 

Moreover,  of  those  barbarians  who  had  taken 
service  as  auxiliaries  in  the  Roman  armies,  the 
greater  part  (the  "Goths,"  for  instance,  as  the  gen- 
eric term  went,  though  that  term  had  no  longer 
any  national  meaning)  had  received  their  baptism 
into  civilized  Europe  from  Arian  sources,  and  this 
in  the  old  time  of  the  fourth  century  when  Arian- 
ism was  "the  thing."  Just  as  we  see  in  eighteenth 
century  Ireland  settlers  and  immigrants  accept- 
ing Protestantism  as  "gentlemanly"  or  "progres- 
sive" (some  there  are  so  provincial  as  still  to  feel 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  109 

thus),  so  the  Rex  in  Spain  and  the  Rex  in  Italy  had 
a  family  tradition;  they,  and  the  descendants  of 
their  original  companions,  were  of  what  had  been 
the  "court"  and  "upper  class"  way  of  thinking, 
^hey  were  "Arians"  and  proud  of  it.  The  num- 
ber of  these  powerful  heretics  in  the  little  local 
courts  was  small,  but  their  irritant  effect  was 
great. 

It  was  the  one  great  quarrel  and  problem  of  the 
time. 

No  one  troubled  about  race,  but  everybody  was 
at  white  heat  upon  the  final  form  of  the  Church. 

The  populace  felt  it  in  their  bones  that  if  Arian- 
ism  conquered,  Europe  was  lost:  for  Arianism 
lacked  vision.  It  was  essentially  a  hesitation  to 
accept  the  Incarnation  and  therefore  it  would  have 
ITred  sooner  or  later  a  denial  of  the  Sacrament,  and 
at  length  it  would  have  relapsed,  as  Protestantism 
has,  into  nothingness.  Such  a  decline  of  imagina- 
tion and  of  will  would  have  been  fatal  to  a  society 
materially  decadent.  Had  Arianism  triumphed,  the 
aged  Society  of  Europe  would  have  perished. 

Now  it  so  happened  that  of  these  local  adminis- 
trators or  governors  who  were  rapidly  becoming 
independent,  and  who  were  surrounded  by  a 
powerful  court,  one  only  was  not  Arian. 

That  one  was  the  Rex  Francorum  or  chieftain  of 
the  little  barbaric  auxiliary  force  of  "Franks" 
which  had  been  drawn  into  the  Roman  system  from 
Belgium  and  the  banks  of  the  lower  Rhine.  This 
body  at   the  time  when  the  transformation  took 


110  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

place  between  the  old  Imperial  system  and  the  be- 
ginnings of  the  nations,  had  its  headquarters  in 
the  Roman  town  of  Tournai. 

A  lad  whose  Roman  name  was  Clodovicus,  and 
whom  his  parents  probably  called  by  some  such 
sound  as  Clodovig  (they  had  no  written  language), 
succeeded  his  father,  a  Roman  officer,^  in  the  gen- 
eralship of  this  small  body  of  troops  at  the  end 
of  the  fifth  century.  Unlike  the  other  auxiliary 
generals  he  was  pagan.  When  with  other  forces 
of  the  Roman  Army,  he  had  repelled  one  of  the 
last  of  the  barbaric  invaders  close  to  the  frontier 
at  the  Roman  town  of  Tolbiacum,  and  succeeded 
to  the  power  of  local  administration  in  Northern 
Gaul,  he  could  not  but  assimilate  himself  with  the 
civilization  wherein  he  was  mixed,  and  he  and 
most  of  his  small  command  were  baptized.  He 
had  already  married  a  Christian  wife,  the  daughter 
of  the  Burgundian  Rex;  but  in  any  case  such  a 
conclusion  was  inevitable. 

The  important  historical  point  is  not  that  he  was 
baptized;  for  an  auxiliary  general  to  be  baptized 
was,  by  the  end  of  the  fifth  century,  as  much  a 
matter  of  course  as  for  an  Oriental  trader  from 
Bombay,  who  has  become  an  English  Lord  or 
Baronet  in  London  in  our  time,  to  wear  trousers 
and  a  coat.  The  important  thing  is  that  he  was 
received  and  baptized  by  Catholics  and  not  by 
Arians — in  the  midst  of  that  enormous  struggle. 

*  He  was  presumably  head  of  auxiliaries.     His  tomb  has  been 
fouud.     It   is   wholly    Roman. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  HI 

Clodovicus — known  in  history  as  Clevis — came 
from  a  remote  corner  of  civilization.  His  men 
were  untouched  by  the  worldly  attraction  of  Arian- 
ism;  they  had  no  tradition  that  it  was  "the  thing" 
or  "smart"  to  adopt  the  old  court  heresy  which 
was  offensive  to  the  poorer  mass  of  Europeans. 
When,  therefore,  this  Rex  Francorum  was  settled 
in  Paris — about  the  year  500 — and  was  beginning 
to  administer  local  government  in  Northern  Gaul, 
the  weight  of  his  influence  was  thrown  with  the 
popular  feeling  and  against  the  Arian  Reges  in 
Italy  and  Spain. 

The  new  armed  forces  of  the  Rex  Francorum, 
a  general  levy  continuing  the  old  Roman  tradition, 
settling  things  once  and  for  all  by  battle  carried 
orthodox  Catholic  administration  all  over  Gaul. 
They  turned  the  Arian  Rex  out  of  Toulouse,  they 
occupied  the  valley  of  the  Rhone.  For  a  moment 
it  seemed  as  though  they  would  support  the  Catho- 
lic populace  against  the  Arian  officials  in  Italy  it- 
self. 

At  any  rate,  their  championship  of  popular  and 
general  religion  against  the  irritant,  small,  admin- 
istrative Arian  bodies  in  the  Palatium  of  this  re- 
gion and  of  that,  was  a  very  strong  lever  which 
the  people  and  the  Bishops  at  their  head  could  not 
but  use  in  favor  of  the  Rex  Francorum's  independ- 
ent power.  It  was,  therefore,  indirectly,  a  very 
strong  leTer  for  breaking  up  the  now  (500-600) 
decayed  and  almost  forgotten  administrative  unity 
of  the  Roman  world. 


112  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Under  such  forces — the  power  of  the  Bishop  in 
each  town  and  district,  the  growing  independence 
of  the  few  and  immensely  rich  great  landowners, 
the  occupation  of  the  Palatium  and  its  official 
machinery  by  the  chieftains  of  the  old  auxiliary 
forces — Western  Europe,  slowly,  very  slowly, 
shifted  its  political  base. 

For  three  generations  the  mints  continued  to 
strike  money  under  the  effigy  of  the  Emperor. 
The  new  local  rulers  never  took,  or  dreamed  of  tak- 
ing, the  Imperial  title;  the  roads  were  still  kept 
up,  the  Roman  tradition  in  the  arts  of  life,  though 
coarsened,  was  never  lost.  In  cooking,  dress, 
architecture,  law,  and  the  rest,  all  the  world  was 
Roman.  But  the  visible  unity  of  the  Western  or 
Latin  Empire  not  only  lacked  a  civilian  and  mili- 
tary centre,  but  gradually  lost  all  need  for  such  a 
centre. 

Towards  the  year  600,  though  our  civilization 
was  still  one,  as  it  had  always  been,  from  the  Brit- 
ish Channel  to  the  Desert  of  Sahara,  and  even 
(through  missionaries)  extended  its  effect  a  few 
miles  eastward  of  the  old  Roman  frontier  beyond 
the  Rhine,  men  no  longer  thought  of  that  civiliza- 
tion as  a  highly  defined  area  within  which  they 
could  always  find  the  civilian  authority  of  one  or- 
gan. Men  no  longer  spoke  of  our  Europe  as  the 
Respublica  or  "common  weal,"  It  was  already  be- 
ginning to  become  a  mass  of  small  and  often  over- 
lapping divisions.  The  things  that  are  older  than, 
and  lie  beneath,  all  exact  political  institutions,  the 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  113 

popular  legends,  the  popular  feelings  for  locality 
and  countrysides,  were  rising  everywhere;  the 
great  landowners  were  appearing  as  semi-inde- 
pendent rulers,  each  on  his  own  estates  (though 
the  many  estates  of  one  man  were  often  widely 
separated). 

The  daily  speech  of  men  was  already  becoming 
divided  into  an  infinity  of  jargons. 

Some  of  these  dialects  were  of  Latin  origin, 
some  as  in  the  Germanies  and  Scandinavia,  mixed 
original  Teutonic  and  Latin;  some,  as  in  Brittany, 
were  Celtic;  some,  as  in  the  eastern  Pyrenees, 
Basque;  in  North  Africa,  we  may  presume,  the 
indigenous  tongue  of  the  Berbers  resumed  its 
sway;  Punic  also  may  have  survived  in  certain 
towns  and  villages  there.^  But  men  paid  no  at- 
tention to  the  origin  of  such  diversities.  The  com- 
mon unity  that  survived  was  expressed  in  the  fixed 
Latin  tongue,  the  tongue  of  the  Church;  and  the 
Church,  now  everywhere  supreme  in  the  decay  of 
Arianism  and  of  paganism  alike,  was  the  principle 
of  life  throughout  all  this  great  area  of  the  West. 

So  it  was  in  Gaul,  and  with  the  little  belt  annexed 
to  Gaul  that  had  risen  in  the  Germanies  to  the  east 
of  the  Rhine;  so  with  nearly  all  Italy  and  Dalmatia, 
and  what  today  we  call  Switzerland  and  a  part  of 
what  today  we  call  Bavaria  and  Baden;  so  with 
what  today  we  call  Spain  and  Portugal;  and  so 
(after  local  adventures  of  a  parallel  sort,  followed 
by  a  reconquest  against  Arians  by  Imperial  oflB- 

•We  have  evidence  that  It  survived  in  the  fifth  century. 


114  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

cers  and  armies)  with  North  Africa  and  with  a  strip 
of  Andalusia. 

But  one  part  of  one  province  did  suffer  a  limited 
and  local — but  sharp — change:  on  one  frontier 
belt,  narrow  but  long,  came  something  much  more 
nearly  resembling  a  true  barbaric  success,  and  the 
results  thereof,  than  anything  which  the  Continent 
could  show.  There  was  here  a  real  breach  of  con- 
tinuity with  Roman  things. 

This  exceptional  strip  was  the  eastern  coast  belt 
of  the  province  of  Britain;  and  we  have  next  to 
ask:  "What  happened  in  Britain  when  the  rest  of 
the  Empire  was  being  transformed,  after  the 
breakdown  of  central  Imperial  power?"  Unless 
we  can  answer  that  question  we  shall  fail  to  pos- 
sess a  true  picture  of  the  continuity  of  Europe  and 
of  the  early  perils  in  spite  of  which  that  continu- 
ity has  survived. 

I  turn,  therefore,  next  to  answer  the  question: 
"What  happened  in  Britain?" 


What  Happened  in  Britain? 

I  HAVE  now  carried  this  study  through  four  sec- 
tions. My  object  in  writing  it  is  to  show  that  the 
Roman  Empire  never  perislied  but  was  only  trans- 
formed; that  the  Catholic  Church,  which,  in  its 
maturity,  it  accepted,  caused  it  to  survive  and 
was,  in  that  origin  of  Europe,  and  has  since  re- 
mained, the  soul  of  one  Western  civilization. 

In  the  first  chapter  I  sketched  the  nature  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  in  the  second  the  nature  of  the 
Church  within  the  Roman  Empire  before  that  civil- 
ization in  its  maturity  accepted  the  Faith.  In  the 
third  I  attempted  to  lay  before  the  reader  that 
transformation  and  material  decline  (it  was  also  a 
survival),  which  has  erroneously  been  called  "the 
fall"  of  the  Roman  Empire.  In  the  fourth  I  pre- 
sented a  picture  of  what  society  must  have  seemed 
to  an  onlooker  just  after  the  crisis  of  that  trans- 
formation and  at  the  entry  into  what  are  called 
the  Dark  Ages:  the  beginnings  of  the  modern 
European  nations  which  have  superficially  differ- 
entiated from  the  old  unity  of  Rome. 

I  could  wish  that   space  had  permitted   me  to 
115 


116  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

describe  a  hundred  other  contemporary  things 
which  would  enable  the  reader  to  seize  both  the 
magnitude  and  the  significance  of  the  great  change 
from  Pagan  to  Christian  times.  I  should  in  par- 
ticular have  dwelt  upon  the  transformation  of  the 
European  mind  with  its  increasing  gravity,  its 
ripening  contempt  for  material  things,  and  its 
resolution  upon  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  human 
soul,  which  it  now  had  firmly  concluded  to  be  per- 
sonally immortal  and  subject  to  a  conscious  des- 
tiny. 

This  doctrine  of  personal  immortality  is  the 
prime  mark  of  the  European  and  stamps  his  lead- 
ership upon  the  world. 

Its  original  seat — long  before  history  begins — 
lay  perhaps  in  Ireland,  later  in  Britain,  certainly 
reduced  to  definition  either  in  Britain  or  in  Gaul. 
It  increasingly  influenced  Greece  and  even  had 
some  influence  upon  the  Jews  before  the  Romans 
subdued  them.  But  it  remained  an  opinion,  an 
idea  looming  in  the  dark,  till  it  was  seen  strong 
and  concrete  in  the  full  light  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  Oddly  enough,  Mahomet,  who  in  most 
things  reacted  towards  weakness  of  flesh  and 
spirit,  adopted  this  Western  doctrine  fully;  it  pro- 
vided his  system  with  its  vigor.  Everywhere  is 
that  doctrine  of  immortality  the  note  of  superior 
intelligence  and  will,  especially  in  its  contrast 
with  the  thin  pantheism  and  negations  of  Asia. 
Everywhere  does  it  accompany  health  and  de- 
cision. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  117 

Its  only  worthy  counterpart  (equally  European 
but  rare,  uprooted  and  private)  is  the  bold  affirma- 
tion of  complete  and  final  death. 

The  transformation  of  the  Roman  Empire,  then, 
in  the  fourth  century  and  the  fifth  was  eventually 
its  preservation,  in  peril  of  full  decay,  by  its  ac- 
ceptation of  the  Faith. 

(To  this  I  might  have  attached  the  continued 
carelessness  for  the  plastic  arts  and  for  much  in 
letters,  the  continued  growth  in  holiness,  and  all 
that  "salting,"  as  it  were,  which  preserved  civiliza- 
tion and  kept  it  whole  until,  after  the  long  seques- 
tration of  the  Dark  Ages,  it  should  discover  an 
opportunity  for  revival. 

My  space  has  not  permitted  me  to  describe  these 
things,  I  must  turn  at  once  to  the  last,  and  what  is 
for  my  readers  the  chief,  of  the  historical  prob- 
lems presented  by  the  beginning  of  the  Dark  Ages. 
That  problem  is  the  fate  of  Britain. 

The  importance  of  deciding  what  happened  in 
Britain  when  the  central  government  of  Rome 
failed,  does  not  lie  in  the  fact  that  an  historical 
conclusion  one  way  or  the  other  can  affect  the 
truth.  European  civilization  is  still  one  whether 
men  see  that  unity  or  no.  The  Catholic  Church  is 
still  the  soul  of  it,  whether  men  know  it  or  do  not 
know  it.  But  the  problem  presented  by  the  fate 
of  Britain  at  that  critical  moment  when  the  prov- 
inces of  the  Roman  Empire  became  independent 
of  any  common  secular  control,  has  this  practical 
importance:    that  those  who  read  it  wrongly  and 


118  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

■who  provide  their  readers  witli  a  false  solution  (as 
the  Protestant  German  school  and  their  copiers 
in  English,  Freeman,  Green  and  the  rest  have 
done)  those  who  talk  of  "the  coming  of  the  Eng- 
lish," "the  Anglo-Saxon  conquest,"  and  the  rest, 
not  only  furnish  arguments  against  the  proper 
unity  of  our  European  story  but  also  produce  a 
warped  attitude  in  the  mind.  Such  men  as  are  de- 
ceived by  false  accounts  of  the  fate  of  Britain  at 
the  entry  Vnto  the  Dark  Ages,  take  for  granted 
many  other  things  historically  untrue.  Their  pre- 
sumptions confuse  or  conceal  much  else  that  is 
historical  truth:  for  instance,  the  character  of  the 
Normans;  and  even  contemporary  and  momen- 
tous truth  before  our  eyes  today:  for  instance, 
the  gulf  between  Englishmen  and  Prussians.  They 
not  only  render  an  Englishman  ignorant  of  his 
own  nation  and  therefore  of  himself,  they  also 
render  all  men  ignorant  of  Europe:  for  a  knowl- 
edge of  Britain  in  the  period  500-700  as  in  the 
period  1530-1630  is  the  test  of  European  history: 
and  if  you  are  wrong  on  these  two  points  you  are 
wrong  on  the  whole. 

A  man  who  desires  to  make  out  that  the  Em- 
pire— that  is  European  civilization — was  "con- 
quered" by  barbarians  cannot  today,  in  the  light 
of  modern  research,  prove  his  case  in  Gaul,  in 
Italy,  in  Spain,  or  in  the  valley  of  the  Rhine.  The 
old  German  thesis  of  a  barbaric  "conquest"  upon 
the  Continent,  possible  when  modern  history  was 
a  child,  has  necessarily  been  abandoned  in  its  ma- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  119 

lurity.  But  that  thesis  still  tries  to  make  out  a 
plausible  case  when  it  speaks  of  Britain,  because 
so  much  of  the  record  here  is  lost  that  there  is 
more  room  for  make-believe;  and  having  made 
it  out,  the  tale  of  a  German  and  barbaric  England, 
his  false  result  will  powerfully  affect  modern  and 
immediate  conclusions  upon  our  common  civiliza- 
tion, upon  our  institutions,  and  their  nature,  and 
in  particular  upon  the  Faith  and  its  authority  in 
Europe. 

f  For  if  Britain  be  something  other  than  England: 
if  what  we  now  know  is  not  original  to  this  Island, 
but  is  of  the  Northern  German  barbarism  in  race 
and  tradition,  if,  in  the  breakdown  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  Britain  was  the  one  exceptional  province 
which  really  did  become  a  separate  barbaric  thing, 
cut  off  at  the  roots  from  the  rest  of  civilization, 
then  those  who  desire  to  believe  that  the  institu- 
tions of  Europe  are  of  no  universal  effect,  that 
the  ancient  laws  of  the  Empire — as  on  property 
and  marriage — were  local,  and  in  particular  that 
the  Reformation  was  the  revolt  of  a  race — and  of 
a  strong  and  conquering  race — against  the  decay- 
ing traditions  of  Rome,  have  something  to  stand 
on.  It  does  not  indeed  help  them  to  prove  that 
our  civilization  is  bad  or  that  the  Faith  is  untrue, 
but  it  permits  them  to  despair  of,  or  to  despise, 
the  unity  of  Europe,  and  to  regard  the  present 
Protestant  world  as  something  which  is  destined 
to  supplant  that  unity. 

Such  a  point  of  view  is  wrong  historically  as  it 


120  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

is  wrong  in  morals.  It  will  find  no  basis  of  mili- 
tary success  in  the  future  any  more  than  it  has 
in  the  past.^  It  must  ultimately  break  down  if 
ever  it  should  attempt  to  put  into  practice  its 
theory  of  superiority  in  barbaric  things.  But 
meanwhile  as  a  self-confident  theory  it  can  do 
harm  indefinitely  great  by  warping  a  great  section 
of  the  European  mind;  bidding  it  refer  its  char- 
acter to  imaginary  barbaric  origins,  so  divorcing  it 
from  the  majestic  spirit  of  Western  Civilization. 
The  North  German  "Teutonic"  school  of  false 
popular  history  can  create  its  own  imaginary  past, 
and  lend  to  such  a  figment  the  authority  of  an- 
tiquity and  of  lineage. 

To  show  how  false  this  modern  school  of  his- 
tory has  been,  but  also  what  opportunities  it  had 
for  advancing  its  thesis,  is  the  object  of  what  fol- 
lows. 

Britain,  be  it  remembered,  is  today  the  only  part 
of  the  Roman  world  in  which  a  conscious  antag- 
onism to  the  ancient  and  permanent  civilization  of 
Europe  exists.  The  Northern  Germanics  and  Scan- 
dinavia, which  have  had,  since  the  Reformation,  a 
religious  agreement  with  all  that  is  still  politically 
powerful  in  Britain,  lay  outside  the  old  civilization. 
They  would  not  have  survived  the  schism  of  the 
sixteenth  century  had  Britain  resisted  that  schism. 
When  we  come  to  deal  with  the  story  of  the  Ref- 
ormation in  Britain,  we  shall  see  how  the  strong 

» I  wrote  and  first  printed  these  words  in  1912.     I  leave  them 

standing  with  greater  force  in   1920. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  121 

popular  resistance  to  the  Reformation  nearly  over- 
came that  small  wealthy  class  which  used  the  re- 
ligious excitement  of  an  active  minority  as  an 
engine  to  obtain  material  advantage  for  them- 
selves. But  as  a  fact  in  Britain  the  popular  resist- 
ance to  the  Reformation  failed.  A  violent  and 
almost  universal  persecution  directed,  in  the  main 
by  the  wealthier  classes,  against  the  religion  of 
the  English  populace  and  the  wealth  which  en- 
dowed it  just  happened  to  succeed.  In  little  more 
than  a  hundred  years  the  newly  enriched  had 
won  the  battle.  By  the  year  1600  the  Faith  of  the 
British  masses  had  been  stamped  out  from  the 
Highlands  to  the  Channel. 

It  is  our  business  to  understand  that  this  phe- 
nomenon, the  moral  severance  of  Britain  from 
Europe,  was  a  phenomenon  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury and  not  of  the  fifth,  and  that  Britain  was  in 
no  way  predestined  by  race  or  tradition  to  so 
lamentable  and  tragic  a  loss. 

Let  us  state  the  factors  in  the  problem. 
(JThe  main  factor  in  the  problem  is  that  the  his- 
tory of  Great  Britain  from  just  before  the  middle 
of  the  fifth  century  (say  the  years  420  to  445) 
until  the  landing  of  St.  Augustine  in  597  is  a 
blank. 

It  is  of  the  first  importance  to  the  student  of  the 
general  history  in  Europe  to  seize  this  point.  It 
is  true  of  no  other  Roman  western  province,  and 
the  truth  of  it  has  permitted  a  vast  amount  of 
empty  assertion,  most  of  it  recent,  and  nearly  all 


lJf2  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

of  it  as  demonstrably  (as  it  is  obviously) 
created  by  a  religious  bias.  When  there  is  no 
proof  or  record  men  can  imagine  almost  anything, 
and  the  anti-Catholic  historians  have  stretched 
imagination  to  the  last  possible  limit  in  filling  this 
blank  with  whatever  could  tell  against  the  con- 
tinuity of  civilization. 

It  is  the  business  of  those  who  love  historic 
truth  to  get  rid  of  such  speculations  as  of  so  much 
rubbish,  and  to  restore  to  the  general  reader  the 
few  certain  facts  upon  which  he  can  solidly 
build. 

Let  me  repeat  that,  had  Britain  remained  true  to 
the  unity  of  Europe  in  that  unfortunate  oppres- 
sion of  the  sixteenth  century  which  ended  in  the 
loss  of  the  Faith,  had  the  populace  stood  firm  or 
been  able  to  succeed  in  the  field  and  under  arms, 
or  to  strike  terror  into  their  oppressors  by  an 
efficient  revolt,  in  other  words  had  the  England 
of  the  Tudors  remained  Catholic,  the  solution  of 
this  ancient  problem  of  the  early  Dark  Ages  would 
present  no  immediate  advantage,  nor  perhaps 
would  the  problem  interest  men  even  academi- 
cally. England  would  now  be  one  with  Europe 
as  she  had  been  for  a  thousand  years  before  the 
uprooting  of  the  Reformation.  But,  as  things  are, 
the  need  for  correction  is  immediate  and  its  suc- 
cess of  momentous  effect.  No  true  historian,  even 
though  he  should  most  bitterly  resent  the  effect 
of  Catholicism  upon  the  European  mind,  can  do 
other  than  combat  what  was,  until  quite  recently. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  123 

the  prevalent  teaching  with  regard  to  the  fate  of 
Britain  when  the  central  government  of  the  Em- 
pire decayed. 

I  will  first  deal  with  the  evidence — such  as  it  is 
— which  has  come  down  to  us  upon  the  fate  of 
Britain  during  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries,  and 
next  consider  the  conclusions  to  which  such  evi- 
dence should  lead  us. 

THE  EVIDENCE 

When  we  have  to  deal  with  a  gap  in  history 
(and  though  none  in  Western  European  history  is 
so  strangely  empty  as  this,  yet  there  are  very  many 
minor  ones  which  enable  us  to  reason  from  their 
analogy),  two  methods  of  bridging  the  gap  are 
present  to  the  historian.  The  first  is  research 
into  such  rare  contemporary  records  as  may  illus- 
trate the  period:  the  second  is  the  parallel  of 
what  has  happened  elsewhere  in  the  same  case, 
or  better  still  (when  that  is  possible)  the  example 
of  what  was  proceeding  in  similar  places  and 
uhder  similar  circumstances  at  the  same  time. 
And  there  is  a  third  thing:  both  of  these  methods 
must  be  submitted  to  the  criterion  of  common 
sense  more  thoroughly  and  more  absolutely  than 
the  evidence  of  fuller  periods.  For  when  you  have 
full  evidence,  even  of  a  thing  extraordinary,  you 
must  admit  its  truth.  But  when  there  is  little  evi- 
dence guess-work  comes  in,  and  common  sense  is 
the  correction  of  guess-work. 


124  EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH 

If,  for  instance,  I  learn,  as  I  can  learn  from  con- 
temporary records  and  from  the  witness  of  men 
still  living,  that  at  the  battle  of  Gettysburg  infantry 
advanced  so  boldly  as  to  bayonet  gunners  at  their 
guns,  I  must  believe  it  although  the  event  is  as- 
tonishing. 

If  I  learn,  as  I  can  learn,  that  a  highly  civilized 
and  informed  government  like  that  of  the  French 
in  1870,  entering  into  a  war  against  a  great  rival, 
had  only  the  old  muzzle-loading  cannon  when 
their  enemies  were  already  equipped  with  modern 
breech-loading  pieces,  I  must  accept  it  on 
overwhelming  evidence,  in  spite  of  my  astonish- 
ment. 

When  even  the  miraculous  appears  in  a  record 
— if  its  human  evidence  is  multiple,  converging 
and  exact — I  must  accept  it  or  deny  the  value  of 
human  evidence. 
■  But  when  I  am  dealing  with  a  period  or  an  event 
for  which  evidence  is  lacking  or  deficient,  then 
obviously  it  is  a  sound  criterion  of  criticism  to  ac- 
cept the  probable  and  not  to  presuppose  the  im- 
probable. Common  sense  and  general  experience 
are  nowhere  more  necessary  than  in  their  appli- 
cation, whether  in  a  court  of  law  or  in  the  study 
of  history,  to  those  problems  whose  difficulty  con- 
sists in  the  absence  of  direct  proof.^ 

» For  Instance,  there  is  no  contemporary  account  mentioning 
London  during  the  last  half  of  the  fifth  and  nearly  all  the  sixth 
century.  Green,  Freeman,  Stubbs,  say  (making  it  up  as  they  go 
along)  that  London  ceased  to  exist:  disappeared!  Then  (they 
assert)    after   a    long   period    of   complete   abandonment   It   was 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  125 

Remembering  all  this,  let  us  first  set  down  what 
is  positively  known  from  record  with  regard  to  the 
fate  of  Britain  in  the  hundred  and  fifty  years  of 
"the  gap." 

CWe  begin  by  noting  that  there  were  many  groups 
of  German  soldiery  in  Britain  before  the  Pirate 
raids  and  that  the  southwest  was — whether  on 
account  of  earlier  pirate  raids  or  on  account  of 
Saxon  settlers  the  descendants  of  Roman  soldiers 
— called  "the  Saxon  shore"  long  before  the  Im- 
perial system  broke  down. 

Next  we  turn  to  documents. 

There  is  exactly  one  contemporary  document 
professing  to  tell  us  anything  at  all  of  what  hap- 
pened within  this  considerable  period,  exactly  one 
document  set  down  by  a  witness;  and  that  docu- 
ment is  almost  valueless  for  our  purpose. 

It  bears  the  title,  De  Excidio  Brittanix  Liber 
Querulus,  St.  Gildas,  a  monk,  was  its  author. 
The  exact  date  of  its  compilation  is  a  matter  of 
dispute— necessarily  so,  for  the  whole  of  that  time 
is  quite  dark.  But  it  is  certainly  not  earlier  than 
545.  So  it  was  written  one  hundred  years  after 
the  beginning  of  that  darkness  which  covers  Brit- 
ish history  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years;  most 
of  the  Roman  regulars  had  been  called  away  for 
a  continental  campaign  in  410.     They  had  often 

laboriously  cleared  by  a  totally  new  race  of  men  and  as  labor- 
iously rebuilt  on  exactly  the  same  site.  The  thing  is  not  phys- 
ically impossible,  but  it  is  so  exceedingly  improbable  that  com- 
mon sense  laughs  at  it. 


126  EUROPE  AiV/.>  THE  FAITH 

so  left  the  island  before.  But  this  time  the  troops 
sent  out  on  expedition  did  not  return.  Britain  was 
visited  in  429  and  447  by  men  who  left  records. 
It  was  not  till  597  that  St.  Augustine  landed.  St. 
Augustine  landed  only  fifty  years  at  the  most  after 
Gildas  wrote  his  Liber  Querulus,  whereas  the 
snapping  of  the  links  between  the  Continent  and 
southeastern  Britain  had  taken  place  at  least  a 
hundred  years  before. 

[\Vell,  it  so  happens  that  this  book  is,  as  I  have 
called  it,  almost  valueless  for  history.  It  is  good  in 
morals;  its  author  complains,  as  all  just  men 
must  do  in  all  times,  of  the  wickedness  of  power- 
ful men,  and  of  the  vices  of  princes.  It  is  a  homily. 
The  motive  of  it  is  not  history,  but  the  reforma- 
tion of  morals.  In  all  matters  extending  to  more 
than  a  lifetime  before  that  of  the  writer,  in  all 
matters,  that  is,  on  which  he  could  not  obtain 
personal  evidence,  he  is  hopelessly  at  sea.  He  is 
valuable  only  as  giving  us  the  general  impression 
of  military  and  social  struggles  as  they  struck  a 
monk  who  desired  to  make  them  the  text  of  a 
sermon. 

He  vaguely  talks  of  Saxon  auxiliaries  from  the 
North  Sea  being  hired  (in  the  traditional  Roman 
manner)  by  some  Prince  in  Roman  Britain  to  fight 
savages  who  had  come  out  of  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland  and  were  raiding.  He  says  this  use  of 
new  auxiliaries  began  after  the  Third  Consulship 
of  Aetius  (whom  he  calls  "Agitius"),  that  is,  after 
446  A.  D.     He  talks  still  more  vaguely  of  the  elec- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  127 

tion  of  local  kings  to  defend  the  island  from  the 
excesses  of  these  auxiliaries.  He  is  quite  as  much 
concerned  with  the  incursions  of  robber  bands  of 
Irish  and  Scotch  into  the  civilized  Roman  province 
as  he  is  with  the  few  Saxon  auxiliaries  who  were 
thus  called  in  to  supplement  the  arms  of  the 
Roman  provincials. 

He  speaks  only  of  a  handful  of  these  auxiliaries, 
three  boatloads;  but  he  is  so  vague  and  ill-in- 
structed on  the  whole  of  this  early  period — a 
hundred  years  before  his  time — that  one  must 
treat  his  account  of  the  transaction  as  half 
legendary.  He  tells  us  that  "more  numerous 
companies  followed,"  and  we  know  what  that 
means  in  the  case  of  the  Roman  auxiliaries 
throughout  the  Empire,  a  few  thousand  armed 
men. 

He  goes  on  to  say  that  these  auxiliaries  mutiny- 
ing for  pay  (another  parallel  to  what  we  should 
expect  from  the  history  of  all  the  previous  hun- 
dred years  all  over  Europe),  threatened  to  plunder 
the  civil  population.  Then  comes  one  sentence  of 
rhetoric  saying  how  they  ravaged  the  countrysides 
"in  punishment  for  our  previous  sins,"  until  the 
"flames"  of  the  tumult  actually  "licked  the  West- 
ern Ocean."  It  is  all  (and  there  is  much  more) 
just  like  what  we  read  in  the  rhetoric  of  the  let- 
tered men  on  the  Continent  who  watched  the  com- 
paratively small  but  destructive  bands  of  .bar- 
barian auxiliaries  in  revolt,  with  their  accompani- 
ment of  escaped  slaves   and   local   ne'er-do-wells. 


128  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

crossing  Gaul  and  pillaging.  If  we  had  no  record 
of  the  continental  troubles  but  that  of  some  one 
religious  man  using  a  local  disaster  as  the  oppor- 
tunity for  a  moral  discourse,  historians  could  have 
talked  of  Gaul  exactly  as  they  talk  of  Britain  on 
the  sole  authority  of  St.  Gildas.  All  the  exaggera- 
tion to  which  we  are  used  in  continental  records 
is  here:  the  "gleaming  sword"  and  the  "flame 
crackling,"  the  "destruction"  of  cities  (which 
afterward  quietly  continue  an  unbroken  life!)  and 
all  the  rest  of  it.  We  know  perfectly  well  that  on 
the  Continent  similar  language  was  used  to  de- 
scribe the  predatory  actions  of  little  bodies  of  bar- 
barian auxiliaries;  actions  calamitous  and  tragic 
no  doubt,  but  not  universal  and  in  no  way  finally 
destructive  of  civilization. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  St.  Gildas  also  tells 
us  of  the  return  home  of  many  barbarians  with 
plunder  (which  is  again  what  we  should  have 
expected).  But  at  the  end  of  this  account  he  makes 
an  interesting  point  which  shows  that — even  if  we 
had  nothing  but  his  written  record  to  judge  by — 
the  barbarian  pirates  had  got  some  sort  of  foothold 
on  the  eastern  coasts  of  the  island. 

For  after  describing  how  the  Romano-British 
of  the  province  organized  themselves  under  one 
Ambrosius  Aurelianus,  and  stood  their  ground,  he 
tells  us  that  "sometimes  the  citizens"  (that  is,  the 
Roman  and  civilized  men)  "sometimes  the  enemy 
were  successful,"  down  to  the  thorough  defeat  of 
some  raiding  body  or  other  of  the  Pagans  at  an  un- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  129 

known  place  which  he  calls  "Mons  Badonicus." 
This  decisive  action,  he  also  tells  us,  took  place  in 
the  year  of  his  own  birth. 

,  Now  the  importance  of  this  last  point  is  that 
Gildas  after  that  date  can  talk  of  things  which  he 
really  knew.  Let  anyone  who  reads  this  page  re- 
call a  great  event  contemporary  with  or  nearly 
following  his  own  birth,  and  see  how  different  is 
his  knowledge  of  it  from  his  knowledge  of  that 
which  came  even  a  few  years  before.  This  is  so 
today  with  all  the  advantages  of  full  record.  How 
much  greater  would  be  the  contrasts  between 
things  really  known  and  hearsay  when  there  was 


none 


This  defeat  of  the  pagan  Pirates  at  Mt.  Badon 
Gildas  calls  the  last  but  not  the  least  slaughter  of 
the  barbarians;  and  though  he  probably  wrote  in 
the  West  of  Britain,  yet  we  know  certainly  from 
his  contemporary  evidence  that  during  the  whole 
of  his  own  lifetime  up  to  the  writing  of  his  book — 
a  matter  of  some  fortj'-four  years — there  was  no 
more  serious  fighting.  In  other  words,  we  are 
certain  that  the  little  pagan  courts  settled  on  the 
east  coast  of  Britain  were  balanced  by  a  remain- 
ing mass  of  declining  Roman  civilization  else- 
where, and  that  there  was  no  attempt  at  anything 
like  expansion  or  conquest  from  the  east  west- 
ward. For  this  state  of  affairs,  remember,  we  have 
direct  contemporary  evidence  during  the  whole 
lifetime  of  a  man  and  up  to  within  at  the  most 
fifty  years — perhaps  less — from  the  day  when  St. 


130  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Augustine  landed  in  Kent  and  restored  record  and 
letters  to  the  east  coast. 

We  have  more  rhetoric  and  more  homilies  about 
the  "deserted  cities  and  the  wickedness  of  men 
and  the  evil  life  of  the  Kings;"  but  that  you  might 
hear  at  any  period.  All  we  really  get  from  Gildas 
is:  (1)  the  confused  tradition  of  a  rather  heavy 
predatory  raid  conducted  by  barbaric  auxiliaries 
summoned  from  across  the  North  Sea  in  true  Ro- 
man fashion  to  help  a  Roman  province  against  un- 
civilized invaders,  Scotch  and  Irish;  (2)  (which 
is  most  important)  the  obtaining  by  these  auxil- 
iary troops  or  their  rulers  (though  in  small  num- 
bers it  is  true),  of  political  power  over  some  ter- 
ritory within  the  island;  (3)  the  early  cessation 
of  any  racial  struggle,  or  conflict  between  Chris- 
tian and  Pagan,  or  between  Barbarian  and  Roman; 
even  of  so  much  as  would  strike  a  man  living 
within  the  small  area  of  Britain,  and  the  confine- 
ment of  the  new  little  pagan  Pirate  courts  to  the 
east  coast  during  the  whole  of  the  first  half  of  the 
sixth  century. 

Here  let  us  turn  the  light  of  common  sense  on 
to  these  most  imperfect,  confused  and  few  facts 
which  Gildas  gives  us.  What  sort  of  thing  would 
a  middle-aged  man,  writing  in  the  decline  of  let- 
ters and  with  nothing  but  poor  and  demonstrably 
distorted  verbal  records  to  go  by,  set  down  with 
regard  to  a  piece  of  warfare,  if  (a)  that  man  were 
a  monk  and  a  man  of  peace,  (b)  his  object  were 
obviously  not  history,  but  a  sermon  on  morals,  and 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  131 

(c)  the  fighting  was  between  the  Catholic  Faith, 
which  was  all  in  all  to  the  men  of  his  time,  and 
Pagans?  Obviously  he  would  make  all  he  could 
of  the  old  and  terrified  legends  of  the  time  long 
before  his  birth,  he  would  get  more  precise  as  his 
birth  approached  (though  always  gloomy  and  ex- 
aggerating the  evil),  and  he  would  begin  to  tell  us 
precise  facts  with  regard  to  the  time  he  could  him- 
self remember.  Well,  all  we  get  from  St.  Gildas 
is  the  predatory  incursions  of  pagan  savages  from 
Scotland  and  Ireland,  long,  long  before  he  was 
born;  a  small  number  of  auxiliaries  called  in  to 
help  the  Roman  Provincials  against  these;  the  per- 
manent settlement  of  these  auxiliaries  in  some 
quarter  or  other  of  the  island  (we  know  from  other 
evidence  that  it  was  the  east  and  southeast  coast) ; 
and  (d)  what  is  of  capital  importance  because 
it  is  really  contemporary,  the  settling  down  of  the 
whole  matter,  apparently  during  Gildas*  own  life- 
time in  the  sixth  century — from  say  500  A.  D.  or 
earlier  to  say  545  or  later. 

I  have  devoted  so  much  space  to  this  one  writer, 
whose  record  would  hardly  count  in  a  time  where 
any  sufficient  historical  document  existed,  because 
his  book  is  absolutely  the  only  one  contemporary 
piece  of  evidence  we  have  upon  the  pirate,  or 
Saxon,  raiding  of  Britain.^  There  are  interesting 
fragments  about  it  in  the  various  documents 
known  (to  us)  collectively  today  as  "The  Anglo- 

*The  single   sentence  in   Prosper  is   insignificant — and   what   is 
more,  demonstrably  false  as   it  stands. 


132  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Saxon  Chronicle" — but  these  documents  were  com- 
piled many  hundreds  of  years  afterwards  and  had 
nothing  better  to  go  on  than  St.  Gildas  himself 
and  possibly  a  few  vague  legends. 

Now  we  happen  to  have  in  this  connection  a 
document  which,  though  not  contemporary  must 
be  considered  as  evidence  of  a  kind.  It  is  sober 
and  full,  written  by  one  of  the  really  great  men  of 
Catholic  and  European  civilization,  written  in  a 
spirit  of  wide  judgment  and  written  by  a  founder 
of  history,  the  Venerable  Bede. 

True,  the  Venerable  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory  was  not  produced  until  three  hundred  years 
after  the  first  raids  of  these  predatory  bands,  not 
until  nearlj'  two  hundred  years  after  St.  Gildas, 
and  not  until  one  hundred  and  forty  years  after 
reading  and  writing  and  the  full  tide  of  Roman 
civilization  had  come  back  to  Eastern  Britain  with 
St.  Augustine:  but  certain  fundamental  state- 
ments of  his  are  evidence. 

Thus  the  fact  that  the  Venerable  Bede  takes  for 
granted  permanent  pirate  settlements  (established 
as  regular,  if  small,  states),  all  the  way  along  the 
North  Sea  coast  from  the  northern  part  of  Britain 
in  which  he  wrote,  brought  down  to  the  central 
south  by  Southampton  Water,  is  a  powerful  or 
rather  a  conclusive  argument  in  favor  of  the  exist- 
ence of  such  states  some  time  before  he  wrote.  It 
is  not  credible  that  a  man  of  this  weight  would 
write  as  he  does  without  solid  tradition  behind 
him;   and  he  tells  us  that  the  settlers  on  this  coast 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  133 

of  Britain  came  from  three  lowland  Frisian  tribes, 
German  and  Danish,  called  Saxons,  Jutes  and 
Angles. 

The  first  name  "Saxon"  was  at  that  time  the 
name  of  certain  pirates  inhabiting  two  or  three 
small  islands  on  the  coasts  between  the  Elbe  and 
the  Rhone.*  Ptolemy  puts  these  "Saxons"  two 
hundred  years  earlier,  just  beyond  the  mouth  of 
the  Elbe;  the  Romans  knew  them  as  scattered 
pirates  in  the  North  Sea,  irritating  the  coasts  of 
Gaul  and  Britain  for  generations.  The  name  later 
spread  to  a  large  island  confederation:  but  that 
was  the  way  with  German  tribal  names.  The  Ger- 
man tribal  names  do  not  stand  for  fixed  races  or 
even  provinces,  but  for  chance  agglomerations 
which  suddenly  rise  and  as  suddenly  disappear. 
CThe  local  term,  "Saxon,"  in  the  fifth  and  sixth 
century  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  general  term, 
"Saxon,"  applied  to  all  northwest  of  the  Germanics 
two  hundred  years  and  more  afterwards.  These 
pirates  then  provided  small  bands  of  fighting  men 
under  chieftains  who  founded  small  organ- 
ized governments  north  of  the  Thames  Estuary, 
at  the  head  of  Southampton  Water,  and  on  the 
Sussex  coast,  when  they  may  or  may  not  have 
found  (but  more  probably  did  find)  existing  settle- 
ments of  their  own  people  already  established  as 
colonies  by  the  Romans.     The  chiefs  very  prob- 

♦  The  name  has  retained  a  vague  significance  for  centuries  and 
Is  now  attached  to  a  population  largely  Slavonic  and  wholly 
Protestant,  south  of  Berlin— hundred  of  miles  from  its  original 
seat. 


134  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

ably  captured  the  Roman  fiscal  organization  of  the 
place,  but  seem  rapidly  to  have  degraded  society 
by  their  barbaric  incompetence.  They  learnt  no 
new  language,  but  continued  to  talk  that  of  their 
original  seat  on  the  Continent,  which  language 
was  split  up  into  a  number  of  local  dialects,  each 
of  which  was  a  mixture  of  original  German  and 
adopted  Greek,  Latin  and  even  Celtic  words. 

Of  the  Jutes  we  know  nothing;  there  is  a  mass 
of  modern  guess  work  about  them,  valueless  like 
all  such  stuff.  We  must  presume  that  they  were 
an  insignificant  little  tribe  who  sent  out  a  few 
mercenaries  for  hire;  but  they  had  the  advantage 
of  sending  out  the  first,  for  the  handful  of  mer- 
cenaries whom  the  Roman  British  called  into  Kent 
were  by  all  tradition  Jutish.  The  Venerable  Bede 
also  bears  witness  to  an  isolated  Jutish  settlement 
in  the  Meon  Valley  near  Southampton  Water,  com- 
parable to  the  little  German  colonies  established  by 
the  Romans  at  Bayeux  in  Normandy  and  near 
Rennes. 

The  Angles  were  something  more  definite;  they 
held  that  corner  of  land  where  the  neck  of  Den- 
mark joins  the  mainland  of  Germany.  This  we 
know  for  certain.  There  v»'as  a  considerable  im- 
migration of  them;  enough  to  make  their  depart- 
ure noticeable  in  the  sparsely  populated  heaths  of 
their  district,  and  to  make  Bede  record  the  travel- 
er's tale  that  their  barren  country  still  looked 
"depopulated."  How  many  boatloads  of  them, 
however,  may  have  come,  we  have  of  course  no 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  135 

sort  of  record:  we  only  know  from  our  common 
sense  that  the  number  must  have  been  insignif- 
icant compared  with  the  total  free  and  slave  popu- 
lation of  a  rich  Roman  province.  Their  chiefs 
got  a  hold  of  the  land  far  above  the  Thames  Es- 
tuary, in  scattered  spots  all  up  the  east  coast  of 
Britain,  as  far  as  the  Firth  of  Forth. 

There  are  no  other  authorities.  There  is  no 
other  evidence  save  St.  Gildas,  a  contemporary 
and — two  hundred  years  after  him,  three  hundred 
after  the  first  event — Bede.  A  mass  of  legend 
and  worse  nonsense  called  the  Historia  Brittonum 
exists  indeed  for  those  who  consult  it — but  it  has 
no  relation  to  historical  science  nor  any  claim  to 
rank  as  evidence.  As  we  have  it,  it  is  centuries 
late,  and  it  need  not  concern  serious  history. 
Even  for  the  existence  of  Arthur — to  which  it  is 
the  principal  witness — popular  legend  is  a  much 
better  guide.  As  to  the  original  dates  of  the  vari- 
ous statements  in  the  Historia  Brittonum,  those 
dates  are  guesswork.  The  legendary  narrative  as 
a  whole,  though  very  ancient  in  its  roots,  dates 
only  from  a  period  subsequent  to  Charlemagne, 
much  more  than  a  century  later  than  Bede  and  a 
time  far  less  cultured. 

The  life  of  St.  Germanus,  who  came  and 
preached  in  Britain  after  the  Roman  legions  had 
left,  is  contemporary,  and  deals  with  events  sixty 
years  before  St.  Gildas'  birth.  It  would  be  valuable 
if  it  told  us  anything  about  the  Pirate  settlements 
on   the  coast — whether   these  were   but   the  con- 


136  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

firmation  of  older  Roman  Saxon  garrisons  or  Ro- 
man agricultural  colonies  or  what — but  it  tells  us 
nothing  about  them.  We  know  that  St.  Germanus 
dealt  in  a  military  capacity  with  "Picts  and  Scots" 
— an  ordinary  barbarian  trouble — but  we  have  no 
hint  at  Saxon  settlements.  St.  Germanus  was  last 
in  Britain  in  447,  and  it  is  good  negative  evidence 
that  we  hear  nothing  during  that  visit  of  any  real 
trouble  from  the  Saxon  pirates  who  at  that  very 
time  might  be  imagined,  if  legend  were  to  be 
trusted,  to  be  establishing  their  power  in  Kent. 

That  ends  the  list  of  witnesses;  that  is  all  our 
evidence,^  To  sum  up.  So  far  as  recorded  history 
is  concerned,  all  we  know  is  this:  that  probably 
some,  but  certainly  only  few,  of  the  Roman  regular 
forces  were  to  be  found  garrisoned  in  Britain  after 
the  year  410;  that  in  the  Roman  armies  there 
had  long  been  Saxon  and  other  German  auxiliaries 
some  of  whom  could  naturally  provide  civilian 
groups  and  that  Rome  even  planted  agricultural 
colonies  of  auxiliaries  permanently  within  the 
Empire;  that  the  south  and  east  coasts  were 
known  as  "the  Saxon  shore"  even  during  Imperial 
times;  that  the  savages  from  Scotland  and  Ire- 
land disturbed  the  civilized  province  cruelly;  that 
scattered  pirates  who  had  troubled  the  southern 
and  eastern  coasts  for  two  centuries,  joined  the 
Scotch  and  Irish  ravaging  bands;    that  some  of 


'  On  such  a  body  of  evidence — less  than  a  morning's  reading 
— did  Green  build  up  for  popular  sale  his  romantic  Making  of 
England. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  137 

these  were  taken  in  as  regular  auxiliaries  on  the 
old  Roman  model,  somewhere  about  the  middle  of 
the  fifth  century  (the  conventional  date  is  445)  ;\ 
that,  as  happened  in  many  another  Roman  prov- 
ince, the  auxiliaries  mutinied  for  pay  and  did  a 
good  deal  of  bad  looting  and  ravaging;  finally  that 
the  ravaging  was  checked,  and  that  the  Pirates 
were  thrown  back  upon  some  permanent  settle- 
ments of  theirs  established  during  these  disturb- 
ances along  the  easternmost  and  southernmost 
coasts.  Their  numbers  must  have  been  very  small 
compared  with  the  original  population.  No  town 
of  any  size  was  destroyed. 

Now  it  is  most  important  in  the  face  of  such  a 
paucity  of  information  to  seize  three  points: 

First,  that  the  ravaging  was  not  appreciably 
worse,  either  in  the  way  it  is  described  or  by  any 
other  criterion,  than  the  troubles  which  the  Con- 
tinent suffered  at  the  same  time  and  which  (as 
we  know)  did  not  there  destroy  the  continuity 
or  unity  of  civilization. 

Secondly,  that  the  sparse  raiders,  Pagan  (as 
were  also  some  few  of  those  on  the  Continent) 
and  incapable  of  civilized  effort,  obtained,  as  they 
did  upon  the  Continent  (notably  on  the  left  bank 
of  the  Rhine),  little  plots  of  territory  which  they 
held  and  governed  for  themselves,  and  in  which 
after  a  short  period  the  old  Roman  order  decayed 
in  the  incapable  hands  of  the  newcomers. 

Rut,  thirdly  (and  upon  this  all  the  rest  will 
turn),  the  position  which  these  less  civilized  and 


138  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

pagan  small  courts  happened  permanently  to  hold, 
were  positions  that  cut  the  link  between  the  Ro- 
man province  of  Britain  and  the  rest  of  what  had 
been  the  united  Roman  Empire. 

This  last  matter — not  numbers,  not  race — is  the 
capital  point  in  the  story  of  Britain  between  447 
and  597. 

f  The  uncivilized  man  happened,  by  a  geograph- 
ical accident,  to  have  cut  the  communication  of 
the  island  with  its  sister  provinces  of  the  Empire. 
He  was  numerically  as  insignificant,  racially  as 
unproductive  and  as  ill  provided  with  fruitful  or 
permanent  institutions  as  his  hrethren  on  the 
Rhine  or  the  Danube.  But  on  the  Rhine  and  the 
Danube  the  Empire  was  broad.  If  a  narrow  fringe 
of  it  was  ruined  it  was  no  great  matter:  only  a 
retreat  of  a  few  miles.  Those  sea  communications 
between  Britain  and  Europe  were  narrow — and 
the  barbarian  had  been  established  across  them. 

The  circulation  of  men,  goods  and  ideas  was 
stopped  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  because 
the  small  pirate  settlements  (mixed  perhaps  with 
barbarian  settlements  already  established  by  the 
Empire)  had,  by  the  gradual  breakdown  of  the 
Roman  ports,  destroyed  communication  with  Eu- 
rope from  Southampton  Water  right  north  to  be- 
yond the  Thames. 

It  seems  certain  that  even  the  great  town  of 
London,  whatever  its  commercial  relations,  kept 
up  no  official  or  political  business  beyond  the  sea. 
The  pirates  had  not  gone  far  inland;   but,  with  no 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  139 

intention  of  conquest  (only  of  loot  or  continued 
establishment),  they  had  snapped  the  bond  by 
which  Britain  lived. 

Such  is  the  direct  evidence,  and  such  our  first 
conclusion  on  it. 

But  of  indirect  indications,  of  reasonable  sup- 
position and  comparison  between  what  came  after 
the  pirate  settlements  and  what  had  been  before, 
there  is  much  more.  By  the  use  of  this  second- 
ary matter  added  to  the  direct  evidence  one  can 
fully  judge  both  the  limits  and  the  nature  of  the 
misfortune  that  overtook  Britain  after  the  central 
Roman  government  failed  and  before  the  Roman 
missionaries,  who  restored  the  province  to  civil- 
ization, had  landed. 

We  may  then  arrive  at  a  conclusion  and  know 
what  that  Britain  was  to  which  the  Faith  returned 
with  St.  Augustine.  When  we  know  that,  we  shall 
know  what  Britain  continued  to  be  until  the  catas- 
trophe of  the  Reformation. 

I  say  that,  apart  from  the  direct  evidence  of  St. 
Gildas  and  the  late  but  respectable  traditions  gath- 
ered by  the  Venerable  Bede,  the  use  of  other  and 
indirect  forms  of  evidence  permits  us  to  be  certain 
of  one  or  two  main  facts,  and  a  method  about  to 
be  described  will  enable  us  to  add  to  these  a  half- 
dozen  more;  the  whole  may  not  be  sufficient, 
indeed,  to  give  us  a  general  picture  of  the  time, 
but  it  will  prevent  us  from  falling  into  any  radical 
error  with  regard  to  the  place  of  Britain  in  the 
future  unity  of  Europe  when  we  come  to  examine 


140  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

that  unity  as  it  re-arose  in  the  Middle  Ages,  partly 
preserved,  partly  reconstituted,  by  the  Catholic 
Church. 

The  historical  method  to  which  I  allude  and  to 
which  I  will  now  introduce  the  reader  may  prop- 
erly be  called  that  of  limitations. 

We  may  not  know  what  happened  between  two 
dates;  but  if  we  know  pretty  well  how  things 
stood  for  some  time  before  the  earlier  date  and 
for  sometime  after  the  later  one,  then  we  have  two 
"jumping  off  places,"  as  it  were,  from  which  to 
build  our  bridge  of  speculation  and  deduction  as 
to  what  happened  in  the  unexplored  gap  of  time 
between. 

Suppose  every  record  of  what  happened  in  the 
United  States  between  1862  and  1880  to  be  wiped 
out  by  the  destruction  of  all  but  one  insufficient 
document,  and  supposing  a  fairly  full  knowledge 
to  survive  of  the  period  between  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  and  1862,  and  a  tolerable  record 
to  survive  of  the  period  between  1880  and  the 
present  year.  Further,  let  there  be  ample  tradi- 
ditional  memory  and  legend  that  a  civil  war  took 
place,  that  the  struggle  was  a  struggle  between 
North  and  South,  and  that  its  direct  and  violent 
financial  and  political  effects  were  felt  for  over  a 
decade. 

The  student  hampered  by  the  absence  of  direct 
evidence  might  make  many  errors  in  detail  and 
might  be  led  to  assert,  as  probably  true,  things  at 
which  a  contemporary  would  smile.    But  by  anal- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  141 

ogy  with  other  contemporary  countries,  by  the 
use  of  his  common  sense  and  his  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  of  local  climate,  of  other  physical 
conditions,  and  of  the  motives  common  to  all  men, 
he  would  arrive  at  a  dozen  or  so  general  conclu- 
sions which  would  be  just.  What  came  after  the 
gap  would  correct  the  deductions  he  had  made 
from  his  knowledge  of  what  came  before  it.  What 
came  before  the  gap  would  help  to  correct  false 
deductions  drawn  from  what  came  after  it.  His 
knowledge  of  contemporary  life  in  Europe,  let  us 
say,  or  in  western  territories  which  the  war  did 
not  reach,  between  1862  and  1880,  would  further 
correct  his  conclusions. 

If  he  were  to  confine  himself  to  the  most  gen- 
eral conclusions  he  could  not  be  far  wrong.  He 
would  appreciate  the  success  of  the  North  and  how 
much  that  success  was  due  to  numbers.  He  would 
be  puzzled  perhaps  by  the  different  positions  of 
the  abolitionist  theory  before  and  after  the  war; 
but  he  would  know  that  the  slaves  were  freed  in 
the  interval,  and  he  would  rightly  conclude  that 
their  freedom  had  been  a  direct  historical  conse- 
quence and  contemporary  efTect  of  the  struggle. 
He  would  be  equally  right  in  rejecting  any  theory 
of  the  colonization  of  the  Southern  States  by  North- 
erners; he  would  note  the  continuity  of  certain 
institutions,  the  non-continuity  of  others.  In  gen- 
eral, if  he  were  to  state  first  what  he  was  sure  of, 
secondly,  what  he  could  fairly  guess,  his  brief 
summary,  though  very  incomplete,  would  not  be 


142  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

off  tlie  rails  of  history;  he  would  not  be  employ- 
ing such  a  method  to  produce  historical  nonsense, 
as  so  many  of  our  modern  historians  have  done  in 
their  desire  to  prove  the  English  people  German 
and  barbaric  in  their  origins. 

This  much  being  said,  let  me  carefully  set  down 
what  we  know  with  regard  to  Britain  before  and 
after  the  bad  gap  in  our  records,  the  unknown 
one  hundred  and  fifty  years  between  the  de- 
parture of  St.  Germanus  and  the  arrival  of  St. 
Augustine. 

We  know  that  before  the  bulk  of  Roman  regu- 
lars left  the  country  in  410,  Britain  was  an  organ- 
ized Roman  province.  Therefore,  we  know  that 
it  had  regular  divisions,  with  a  town  as  the  centre 
of  each,  many  of  the  towns  forming  the  Sees  of  the 
Bishops.  We  know  that  official  records  were  kept 
in  Latin  and  that  Latin  was  the  otficial  tongue. 
We  further  know  that  the  island  at  this  time  had 
for  generations  past  suffered  from  incursions  of 
Northern  barbarians  in  great  numbers  over  the 
Scottish  border  and  from  piratical  raids  of  sea- 
farers (some  Irish,  others  Germanic,  Dutch  and 
Danish  in  origin)  in  much  lesser  numbers,  for  the 
amount  of  men  and  provisions  conveyable  across  a 
wide  sea  in  small  boats  is  highly  limited. 

Within  four  years  of  the  end  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury, nearly  two  hundred  years  after  the  cessation 
of  regular  Roman  government,  missionary  priests 
from  the  Continent,  acting  on  a  Roman  episcopal 
commission,  land  in  Britain;    from  that  moment 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  143 

writing  returns   and  our  chronicles  begin   again. 
What  do  they  tell  us? 

jFirst,  that  the  whole  island  is  by  that  time 
broken  up  into  a  number  of  small  and  warring 
districts.  Secondly,  that  these  numerous  little  dis- 
tricts, each  under  its  petty  king  or  prince,  fall  into 
two  divisions:  some  of  these  petty  kings  and 
courts  are  evidently  Christian,  Celtic-speaking  and 
by  all  their  corporate  tradition  inherit  from  the  old 
Roman  civilization.  The  other  petty  kings  and 
courts  speak  various  "Teutonic"  dialects,  that  is, 
dialects  made  up  of  a  jargon  of  original  German 
words  and  Latin  words  mixed.  The  population 
of  the  little  settlements  under  these  eastern 
knights  spoke,  apparently,  for  the  most  part  the 
same  dialects  as  their  courts.  Thirdly,  we  find 
that  these  courts  and  their  subjects  are  not  only 
mainly  of  this  speech,  but  also,  in  the  mass,  pagan. 
There  may  have  been  relics  of  Catholicism  among 
them,  but  at  any  rate  the  tiny  courts  and  petty 
kinglets  were  pagan  and  "Teutonic"  in  speech. 
Fourthly,  the  divisions  between  these  two  kinds  of 
little  states  were  such  that  the  decayed  Christians 
were,  when  St.  Augustine  came,  roughly-speaking 
in  the  West  and  centre  of  the  island,  the  Pagans 
on  the  coasts  of  the  South  and  the  East. 

All  this  tallies  with  the  old  and  distorted  legends 
and  traditions,  as  it  does  with  the  direct  story  of 
Gildas,  and  also  with  whatever  of  real  history  may 
survive  in  the  careful  compilation  of  legend  and 
tradition  made  by  the  Venerable  Bede. 


144  EUROPE  A\D  THE  FAITH 

The  first  definite  historical  truth  which  we  de- 
rive from  this  use  of  the  method  of  limitations, 
is  of  the  same  sort  as  that  to  which  the  direct 
evidence  of  Gildas  leads  us.  A  series  of  settle- 
ments had  been  effected  upon  the  coasts  of  the 
North  Sea  and  the  eastern  part  of  the  Channel 
from,  let  us  say,  Dorsetshire  or  its  neighborhood, 
right  up  to  the  Firth  of  Forth.  They  had  been 
effected  by  the  North  Sea  pirates  and  their  foot- 
hold was  good. 

Now  let  us  use  this  method  of  limitations  for 
matters  a  little  less  obvious,  and  ask,  first,  what 
were  the  limits  between  these  two  main  groups 
of  little  confused  and  warring  districts;  secondly, 
how  far  was  either  group  coherent;  thirdly,  what 
had  survived  in  either  group  of  the  old  order; 
and,  fourthly,  what  novel  thing  had  appeared  dur- 
ing the  darkness  of  this  century-and-a-half  or  two 
centuries?^ 

Taking  these  four  points  seriatim: 

(1)  Further  inland  than  about  a  day's  march 
from  the  sea  or  from  the  estuaries  of  rivers,  we 
have  no  proof  of  the  settlement  of  the  pirates  or 
the  formation  by  them  of  local  governments.  It 
is  impossible  to  fix  the  boundaries  in  such  a  chaos, 
but  we  know  that  most  of  the  county  of  Kent  and 
the  seacoast  of  Sussex,  also  all  within  a  raiding 

•A  century-and-a-half  from  the  very  last  Roman  evidence,  the 
visit  of  St.  Germanus  in  447  to  the  landing  of  St.  Augustine 
exactly  150  years  later  (597) ;  nearly  two  centuries  from  the 
withdrawal  of  the  expeditionary  Roman  Army  to  the  landing  of 
St.    Augustine    (410-597). 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  145 

distance  of  Southampton  Water,  and  of  the  Hamp- 
shire Avon,  the  maritime  part  of  East  Anglia  and 
of  Lincolnshire,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  the  East 
Riding  of  Yorkshire,  Durham,  the  coastal  part  at 
least  of  Northumberland  and  the  Lothians,  were 
under  numerous  pagan  kinglets,  whose  courts 
talked  this  mixture  of  German  and  Latin  words 
called  "Teutonic  dialects." 

What  of  the  Midlands?  The  region  was  a  wel- 
ter, and  a  welter  of  which  we  can  tell  very  little 
indeed.  It  formed  a  sort  of  march  or  borderland 
between  the  two  kinds  of  courts,  those  of  the  king- 
lets and  chieftains  who  still  preserved  a  tradition 
of  civilization,  and  those  of  the  kinglets  who  had 
lost  that  tradition.  This  mixed  borderland  tended 
apparently  to  coalesce  (the  facts  of  which  we 
have  to  judge  are  very  few)  under  one  chief.  It 
was  later  known  not  under  a  Germanic  or  Celtic 
name,  but  under  the  low  Latin  name  of  "Mercia" 
that  is  the  "Borderland."  To  the  political  aspect  of 
this  line  of  demarcation  I  will  return  in  a  moment. 

(2)  As  to  the  second  question:  What  kind  of 
cohesion  was  there  between  the  western  or  the 
eastern  sets  of  these  vague  and  petty  governments? 
The  answer  is  that  the  cohesion  was  of  the  loosest 
in  either  case.  Certain  fundamental  habits  dif- 
ferentiated East  from  West,  language,  for  instance, 
and  much  more  religion.  Before  the  coming  of 
St.  Augustine,  all  the  western  and  probably  most 
of  the  central  kinglets  were  Christians;  the  king- 
lets on  the  eastern  coasts  Pagan. 


146  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

There  was  a  tendency  in  the  West  apparently 
to  hold  together  for  common  interests,  but  no 
longer  to  speak  of  one  head.  But  note  this  inter- 
esting point.  The  West  that  felt  some  sort  of 
common  bond,  called  itself  the  Cymry,  and  only 
concerned  the  mountain  land.  It  did  not  include, 
it  carefully  distinguished  itself  from  the  Christians 
of  the  more  fertile  Midlands  and  South  and  East, 
which  it  called  "LaghansJ' 

Along  the  east  coast  there  was  a  sort  of  tradi- 
tion of  common  headship,  very  nebulous  indeed, 
but  existent.  Men  talked  of  "chiefs  of  Britain," 
"Bretwaldas,"  a  word,  the  first  part  of  which  is 
obviously  Roman,  the  second  part  of  which  may 
be  Germanic  or  Celtic  or  anything,  and  which  we 
may  guess  to  indicate  a  titular  headship.  But — 
and  this  must  be  especially  noted — there  was  no 
conscious  or  visible  cohesion  among  the  little 
courts  of  the  east  and  southeast  coasts;  there 
was  no  conscious  and  deliberate  continued  pagan 
attack  against  the  Western  Christians  as  such  in 
the  end  of  the  sixth  century  when  St.  Augustine 
landed,  and  no  Western  Celtic  Christian  resist- 
ance, organized  as  such,  to  the  chieftains  scattered 
along  the  eastern  coast.  Each  kinglet  fought  with 
each,  pagan  with  pagan,  Christian  with  Christian, 
Christian  and  pagan  in  alliance  against  pagan  and 
Christian  in  alliance — and  the  cross  divisions  were 
innumerable.  You  have  petty  kings  on  the  east- 
ern coasts  with  Celtic  names;  you  have  Saxon 
allies  in  Celtic  courts;  you  have  Western  Christiair 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  147 

kings  winning  battles  on  the  coasts  of  the  North 
Sea  and  Eastern  kings  winning  battles  nearly  as 
far  west  as  the  Severn,  etc.,  etc.  I  have  said 
that  it  is  of  capital  importance  to  appreciate  this 
point — that  the  whole  thing  was  a  chaos  of  little 
independent  districts  all  fighting  in  a  hotch-potch 
and  not  a  clash  of  warring  races  or  tongues. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  with  our  modern  experience 
of  great  and  highly  conscious  nations  to  conceive 
such  a  state  of  affairs.  When  we  think  of  fighting 
and  war,  we  cannot  but  think  of  one  considerable 
conscious  nation  fighting  against  another  similar 
nation,  and  this  modern  habit  of  mind  has  misled 
the  past  upon  the  nature  of  Britain  at  the  moment 
when  civilization  reentered  the  South  and  East  of 
the  island  with  St.  Augustine.  Maps  are  published 
with  guesswork  boundaries  showing  the  "fron- 
tiers" of  the  "Anglo-Saxon  conquest,"  at  definite 
dates,  and  modern  historians  are  fond  of  talking 
of  the  "limits"  of  that  conquest  being  "extended" 
to  such  and  such  points.  There  were  no  "fron- 
tiers:" there  was  no  "conquest"  either  way — of 
east  over  west  or  west  over  east.  There  were  no 
"extending"  limits  of  Eastern  (or  of  Western) 
rule.  There  was  no  "advance  to  Chester,"  no 
"conquest  of  the  district  of  Bath."  There  were 
battles  near  Bath  and  battles  near  Chester,  the 
loot  of  a  city,  a  counter  raid  by  the  Westerners 
and  all  the  rest  of  it.  But  to  talk  of  a  gradual 
"Anglo-Saxon  conquest"  is  an  anachronism. 

The  men  of  the  time  would  not  have  understood 


148  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

such  language,  for  indeed  it  has  no  relation  to  the 
facts  of  the  time. 

The  kinglet  who  could  gather  his  men  from  a 
day's  march  round  his  court  in  the  lower  Thames 
Valley,  fought  against  the  kinglet  who  could 
gather  his  men  from  a  day's  march  round  his 
stronghold  at  Canterbury.  A  Pagan  Teutonic- 
speaking  Eastern  kinglet  would  be  found  allied 
with  a  Christian  Celtic-speaking  Western  kinglet 
and  his  Christian  followers;  and  the  allies  would 
march  indifferently  against  another  Christian  or 
another  pagan. 

There  was  indeed  later  a  westward  movement 
in  language  and  habit  which  I  shall  mention; 
that  was  the  work  of  the  Church.  So  far  as  war- 
fare goes  there  was  no  movement  westward  or 
eastward.  Fighting  went  on  continually  in  all 
directions,  from  a  hundred  separate  centres,  and 
if  there  are  reliable  traditions  of  an  Eastern  Pagan 
kinglet  commanding  some  mixed  host  once  reach- 
ing so  far  west  as  to  raid  the  valley  of  the  Wilt- 
shire Avon  and  another  raiding  to  the  Dee,  so 
there  are  historical  records  of  a  Western  Christian 
kinglet  reaching  and  raiding  the  Eastern  settle- 
ments right  down  to  the  North  Sea  at  Bamborough. 

(3)  Now  to  the  third  point:  What  had  survived 
of  the  old  order  in  either  half  of  this  anarchy? 
Of  Roman  government,  of  Roman  order,  of  true 
Roman  civilization,  of  that  palatium  of  which  we 
spoke  in  a  previous  chapter,  nothing  had  anywhere 
survived.    The  disappearance  of  the  Roman  taxing 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  149 

and  judicial  machinery  is  the  mark  of  Britain's 
great  wound.  It  differentiates  the  fate  of  Britain 
from  that  of  Gaul. 

The  West  of  Britain  had  lost  this  Roman  tradi- 
tion of  government  just  as  much  as  the  East.    The 
"Pict  and  Scot"'  and  the  North  Sea  pirates,  since 
they  could  not  read  or  write,  or  build  or  make  a 
road    or    do    anything    appreciably   useful — inter- 
rupted civilized  life  and  so  starved  it.    The  raids 
did  more  to  break  up  the  old  Roman  society  than 
did  internal  decay.     The  Western  chieftains  who 
retained  the  Roman  Religion  had  thoroughly  lost 
the  Roman  organization  of  society  before  the  year 
600.     The  Roman  language,  probably  only  really 
familiar  in  the  towns,  seems  to  have  gone;    the 
Roman   method   of  building   had   certainly   gone. 
In  the  West  the  learned  could  still  write,  but  they 
must  have  done  so  most  sparingly,  if  we  are  to 
judge  by  the  absence  of  any  remains.    The  Church 
in  some  truncated  and  starved  form,  survived  in- 
deed in  the  West;  it  was  the  religion  to  which  an 
Imperial  fragment  cut  off  from  all  other  Roman 
populations  might  be  expected  to  cling.    Paganism 
seems  to  have  died  out  in  the  West;  but  the  mu- 
tilated Catholicism  that  had  taken  its  place  became 
provincial,   ill-instructed,   and   out  of  touch  with 
Europe.     We  may  guess,  though  it  is  only  guess- 
work, that  its  chief  ailment  came  from  the  spir- 

» The  "Scots" — that  is,  the  Irish — were,  of  course,  of  a  higher 
civilization  than  the  other  raiders  of  Britain  during  this  darli 
time.  The  Catholic  Church  reached  them  early.  They  had  let- 
ters and  the  rest  long  before  Augustine  came  to  Britain. 


150  EUROPE  ASD  THE  FAITH 

itual  fervor,  ill-disciplined  but  vivid,  of  Brittany 
and  of  Ireland. 

What  had  survived  in  the  eastern  part  of  Brit- 
tain?  On  the  coasts,  and  up  the  estuaries  of  the 
navigable  rivers?  Perhaps  in  patches  the  original 
language.  It  is  a  question  whether  Germanic  dia- 
lects had  not  been  known  in  eastern  Britain  long 
before  the  departure  of  the  Roman  legions.  But 
anyhow,  if  we  suppose  the  main  speech  of  the  East 
to  have  been  Celtic  and  Latin  before  the  pirate 
raids,  then  that  main  speech  had  gone. 

So,  perhaps  altogether,  certainly  for  the  most 
part  had  religion.  So  certainly  had  the  arts — read- 
ing and  writing  and  the  rest.  Over-sea  commerce 
had  certainly  dwindled,  but  to  what  extent  we  can- 
not tell.  It  is  not  credible  that  it  wholly  disap- 
peared; but  on  the  other  hand  there  is  very  little 
trace  of  connection  with  southern  and  eastern 
Britain  in  the  sparse  continental  records  of  this 
time. 

Lastly,  and  perhaps  most  important,  the  old 
bishoprics  had  gone. 

When  St.  Gregory  sent  St.  Augustine  and  his 
missionaries  to  refound  the  old  Sees  of  Britain, 
his  original  plan  of  that  refounding  had  to  be 
wholly  changed.  He  evidently  had  some  old  im- 
perial scheme  before  him,  in  which  he  conceived 
of  London,  the  great  city,  as  the  Metropolis  and 
the  lesser  towns  as  suffragan  to  its  See.  But  facts 
were  too  strong  for  him.  He  had  to  restore  the 
Church  in  the  coasts  that  cut  off  Britain  from  Eu- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  151 

rope,  and  in  doing  so  he  had  to  deal  with  a  ruin. 
Tradition  was  lost;  and  Britain  is  the  only  Roman 
province  in  which  this  very  great  break  in  the 
continuity  of  the  bishoprics  is  to  be  discovered. 

One  thing  did  not  disappear,  and  that  was  the 
life  of  the  towns. 

Of  course,  a  Roman  town  in  the  sixth  or  seventh 
century  was  not  what  it  had  been  in  the  fourth  or 
fifth;  but  it  is  remarkable  that  in  all  this  wear- 
ing away  of  the  old  Roman  structure,  its  frame- 
work (which  was,  and  is,  municipal)  remained. 

If  we  cast  up  the  principal  towns  reappearing 
when  the  light  of  history  returns  to  Britain  with 
St.  Augustine's  missionaries,  we  find  that  all  of 
them  are  Roman  in  origin;  what  is  more  impor- 
tant, we  find  that  the  proportion  of  surviving  Ro- 
man towns  centuries  later,  when  full  records  exist, 
is  even  larger  than  it  is  in  other  provinces  of  the 
Empire  which  we  know  to  have  preserved  the 
continuity  of  civilization.  Exeter  (perhaps  Nor- 
wich), Chester,  Manchester,  Lancaster,  Carlisle, 
York,  Canterbury,  Lincoln,  Rochester,  Newcastle, 
Colchester,  Bath,  Winchester,  Chichester,  Glou- 
cester, Cirencester,  Leicester,  Old  Salisbury,  Great 
London  itself — these  pegs  upon  which  the  web  of 
Roman  civilization  was  stretched — stood  firm 
through  the  confused  welter  of  wars  between  all 
these  petty  chieftains.  North  Sea  Pirate,  Welsh 
and  Cumbrian  and  Pennine  highlander,  Irish  and 
Scotch. 

There  was  a  slow  growth  of  suburbs  and  some 


152  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

substitution  of  new  suburban  sites  for  old  city 
sites — as  at  Southampton,  Portsmouth,  Bristol, 
Huntingdon,  etc.  It  is  what  you  find  all  over 
Europe.  But  there  was  no  real  disturbance  of 
this  scheme  of  towns  until  the  industrial  revolu- 
tion of  modern  times  came  to  diminish  the  almost 
immemorial  importance  of  the  Roman  cities  and 
to  supplant  their  economic  functions  by  the  huge 
aggregations  of  the  Potteries,  the  Midlands,  South 
Lancashire,  the  coal  fields  and  the  modern  ports. 

The  student  of  this  main  problem  in  European 
history,  the  fate  of  Britain,  must  particularly  note 
the  phenomenon  here  described.  It  is  the  capital 
point  of  proof  that  Roman  Britain,  though  suffer- 
ing grievously  from  the  Angle,  Saxon,  Scotch,  and 
Irish  raids,  and  though  cut  off  for  a  time  from 
civilization,  did  survive. 

Those  who  prefer  to  think  of  England  as  a  col- 
ony of  barbarians  in  which  the  European  life  was 
destroyed,  have  to  suppress  many  a  truth  and 
to  conceive  many  an  absurdity  in  order  to  support 
their  story;  but  no  absurdity  of  theirs  is  worse 
than  the  fiction  they  put  forward  with  regard  to 
the  story  of  the  English  towns. 

It  was  solemnly  maintained  by  the  Oxford 
School  and  its  German  masters  that  these  great 
Roman  towns,  one  after  the  other,  were  first  ut- 
terly destroyed  by  the  Pirates  of  the  North  Sea, 
then  left  in  ruins  for  generations,  and  then  re- 
occupied  through  some  sudden  whim  by  the  new- 
comers!    It  needs  no  historical  learning  to  laugh 


EUROPE  AiVD  THE  FAITH  153 

at  such  a  fancy;  but  historical  learning  makes  it 
even  more  impossible  than  it  is  laughable. 

Certain  rare  towns,  of  course,  decayed  in  the 
course  of  centuries:  the  same  is  true,  for  that 
matter,  of  Spain  and  Gaul  and  Italy.  Some  few 
here  (as  many  in  Spain,  in  Gaul  and  in  Italy)  may 
have  been  actually  destroyed  in  the  act  of  war. 
There  is  tradition  of  something  of  the  sort  at 
Pevensey  (the  old  port  of  Anderida  in  Sussex)  and 
for  some  time  a  forgery  lent  the  same  distinction 
to  Wroxeter  under  the  Wrekin.  A  great  number 
of  towns  again  (as  in  every  other  province  of  the 
Empire)  naturally  diminished  with  the  effect  of 
time.  Dorchester  on  the  Thames,  for  instance, 
seems  to  have  been  quite  a  large  place  for  centuries 
after  the  first  troubles  with  the  pirates,  though 
today  it  is  only  a  village;  but  it  did  not  decay  as 
the  result  of  war.  Sundry  small  towns  became 
smaller  still,  some  few  sank  to  hamlets  as  genera- 
tion after  generation  of  change  passed  over  them: 
but  we  find  just  the  same  thing  in  Picardy  in  the 
Roussillon,  in  Lombardy  and  in  Aquitaine.  What 
did  not  happen  in  Britain  was  a  subversion  of  the 
Roman  municipal  system. 

Again,  the  unwalled  settlement  outside  the 
walled  town  often  grew  at  the  expense  of  the  mu- 
nicipality within  the  walls.  I  have  given  Hunting- 
don as  an  example  of  this;  and  there  is  St.  Albans, 
and  Cambridge.  But  these  also  have  their  paral- 
lels in  every  other  province  of  the  West.  Even  in 
distant   Africa  you  find   exactly  the  same  thing. 


154  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

You  find  it  in  the  northern  suburb  of  Roman  Paris 
itself.  That  suburb  turns  into  the  head  of  the 
mediaeval  town — yet  Paris  is  perhaps  the  best  ex- 
ample of  Roman  continuity  in  all  Europe. 

The  seaports  naturally  changed  in  character  and 
often  in  actual  site,  especially  upon  the  flat,  and 
therefore  changeable,  eastern  shores — and  that  is 
exactly  what  you  find  in  similar  circumstances 
throughout  the  tidal  waters  of  the  Continent. 
There  is  not  the  shadow  or  the  trace  of  any  wide- 
spread destruction  of  the  Roman  towns  in  Britain. 
On  the  contrary  there  is,  as  much  or  more  than 
elsewhere  in  the  Empire,  the  obvious  fact  of  their 
survival. 

The  phenomenon  is  the  more  remarkable  when 
we  consider  first  that  the  names  of  Roman  towns 
given  above  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  complete  list 
(one  may  add  immediately  from  memory  the 
southern  Dorchester,  Dover,  Doncaster,  etc.),  and, 
secondly,  that  we  have  but  a  most  imperfect  list 
remaining  of  the  towns  in  Roman  Britain. 

A  common  method  among  those  who  belittle  the 
continuity  of  our  civilization,  is  to  deny  a  Roman 
origin  to  any  town  in  which  Roman  remains  do  not 
happen  to  have  been  noted  as  yet  by  antiquarians. 
Even  under  that  test  we  can  be  certain  that  Wind- 
sor, Lewes,  Arundel,  Dorking,  and  twenty  others, 
were  seats  of  Roman  habitation,  though  the  re- 
maining records  of  the  first  four  centuries  tell  us 
nothing  of  them.  But  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the 
mere  absence  of  catalogued  Roman  remains  proves 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  155 

nothing.  The  soil  of  towns  is  shifted  and  reshifted 
continually  generation  after  generation.  The  an- 
tiquary is  not  stationed  at  every  digging  of  a 
foundation,  or  sinking  of  a  well,  or  laying  of  a 
drain,  or  paving  of  a  street.  His  methods  are  of 
recent  establishment.  We  have  lost  centuries  of 
research,  and,  even  with  all  our  modern  interest  in 
such  matters,  the  antiquary  is  not  informed  once 
in  a  hundred  times  of  chance  discoveries,  unless 
perhaps  they  be  of  coins.  When,  moreover,  we 
consider  that  for  fifteen  hundred  years  this  turn- 
ing and  returning  of  the  soil  has  been  going  on 
within  the  municipalities,  it  is  ridiculous  to  affirm 
that  such  a  place  as  Oxford,  for  instance — a  town 
of  importance  in  the  later  Dark  Ages — had  no 
Roman  root,  simply  because  the  modern  antiquary 
is  not  yet  possessed  of  any  Roman  remains  re- 
cently discovered  in  it:  there  may  have  been  no 
town  here  before  the  fifth  century:  but  it  is  un- 
likely. 

One  further  point  must  be  noticed  before  we 
leave  this  prime  matter:  had  there  been  any  con- 
siderable destruction  of  the  Roman  towns  in  Brit- 
ain, large  and  small,  we  should  expect  it  where  the 
pirate  raids  fell  earliest  and  most  fiercely.  We 
should  expect  to  find  the  towns  near  the  east  and 
the  south  coast  to  have  disappeared.  The  histor- 
ical truth  is  quite  opposite.  The  garrison  of  An- 
derida  indeed  and  of  Anderida  alone  (Pevensey) 
was,  if  we  may  trust  a  vague  phrase  written  four 
hundred  years  later,  massacred  in  war.    But  Lin- 


156  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

coin,  York,  Newcastle,  Colchester,  London,  Dover, 
Canterbury,  Rochester,  Chichester,  Portchester, 
Winchester,  the  very  principal  examples  of  sur- 
vival, are  all  of  them  either  right  on  the  eastern 
and  southern  coast  or  within  a  day's  striking  dis- 
tance of  it. 

As  to  decay,  the  great  garrison  centre  of  the 
Second  Legion,  in  the  heart  of  the  country  which 
the  pirate  raiders  never  reached,  has  sunk  to  be 
little  Caerleon-upon-Usk,  just  as  surely  as  Dor- 
chester on  the  Thames,  far  away  from  the  eastern 
coast,  has  decayed  from  a  town  to  a  village,  and 
just  as  surely  as  Richboro',  an  island  right  on  the 
pirate  coast  itself,  has  similarly  decayed !  As  with 
destruction,  so  with  decay,  there  is  no  increasing 
proportion  as  we  go  from  the  west  eastward  to- 
wards the  Pirate  settlements. 

But  the  point  need  not  be  labored.  The  supposi- 
tion that  the  Roman  towns  disappeared  is  no 
longer  tenable,  and  the  wonder  is  how  so  aston- 
ishing an  assertion  should  have  lived  even  for  a 
generation.  The  Roman  towns  survived,  and,  with 
them,  Britain,  though  maimed. 

(4)  Now  for  the  last  question:  what  novel 
things  had  come  in  to  Britain  with  this  break  down 
of  the  central  Imperial  authority  in  the  fifth  and 
sixth  centuries?  To  answer  that  is,  of  course,  to 
answer  the  chief  question  of  all,  and  it  is  the  most 
difiBcult  of  all  to  answer. 

I  have  said  that  presumably  on  the  South  and 
East  the  language  was  new.     There  were  numer- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  157 

ous  Germanic  troops  permanently  in  Britain  be- 
fore the  legions  disappeared,  there  was  a  constant 
intercourse  with  Germanic  auxiliaries:  there  were 
probably  colonies,  half  military,  half  agricultural. 
Some  have  even  thought  that  "Belgic"  tribes, 
whether  in  Gaul  or  Britain,  spoke  Teutonic  dia- 
lects; but  it  is  safer  to  believe  from  the  combined 
evidence  of  place  names  and  of  later  traditions, 
that  there  was  a  real  change  in  the  common  talk 
of  most  men  within  a  march  of  the  eastern  sea 
or  the  estuaries  of  its  rivers. 

This  change  in  language,  if  it  occurred  (and  we 
must  presume  it  did,  though  it  is  not  absolutely 
certain,  for  there  may  have  been  a  large  amount  of 
mixed  German  speech  among  the  people  before  the 
Roman  soldiers  departed) — this  change  of  lan- 
guage, I  say,  is  the  chief  novel  matter.  The  decay 
of  religion  means  less,  for  when  the  pirate  raids 
began,  though  the  Empire  was  already  officially 
Christian  at  its  heart,  the  Church  had  only  just 
taken  firm  root  in  the  outlying  parts. 

The  institutions  which  arose  in  Britain  every- 
where when  the  central  power  of  Rome  decayed — 
the  meetings  of  armed  men  to  decide  public  af- 
fairs, money  compensation  for  injuries,  the  organ- 
izing of  society  by  "hundreds,"  etc.,  were  common 
to  all  Europe.  Nothing  but  ignorance  can  regard 
them  as  imported  into  Britain  (or  into  Ireland  or 
Brittany  for  that  matter)  by  the  Pirates  of  the 
North  Sea.  They  are  things  native  to  all  our  Euro- 
pean race  when  it  lives  simply.     A  little  knowl- 


158  EUROPE  ASD  THE  FAITH 

edge  of  Europe  will  teach  us  that  there  was  noth- 
ing novel  or  peculiar  in  such  customs.  They  ap- 
pear universally  among  the  Iberians  as  among  the 
Celts,  among  the  pure  Germans  beyond  the  Rhine, 
the  mixed  Franks  and  Batavians  upon  the  delta 
of  that  river,  and  the  lowlands  of  the  Scheldt  and 
the  Meuse;  even  among  the  untouched  Roman 
populations. 

Everywhere  you  get,  as  the  Dark  Ages  approach 
and  advance,  the  meetings  of  armed  men  in  coun- 
cil, the  chieftain  assisted  in  his  government  by 
such  meetings,  the  weaponed  assent  or  dissent  of 
the  great  men  in  conference,  the  division  of  the 
land  and  people  into  "hundreds,"  the  fine  for  mur- 
der, and  all  the  rest  of  it. 

Any  man  who  says  (and  most  men  of  the  last 
generation  said  it)  that  among  the  changes  of  the 
tw^o  hundred  years'  gap  was  the  introduction  of 
novel  institutions  peculiar  to  the  Germans,  is 
speaking  in  ignorance  of  the  European  unity  and 
of  that  vast  landscape  of  our  civilization  which 
every  true  historian  should,  however  dimly,  pos- 
sess. The  same  things,  talked  of  in  a  mixture 
of  Germanic  and  Latin  terms  between  Poole  Har- 
bour and  the  Bass  Rock,  were  talked  of  in  Celtic 
terms  from  the  Start  to  Glasgow;  the  chroniclers 
wrote  them  down  in  Latin  terms  alone  everywhere 
from  the  Sahara  to  the  Grampians  and  from  the 
Adriatic  to  the  Atlantic.  The  very  Basques,  who 
were  so  soon  to  begin  the  resistance  of  Christen- 
dom against  the  Mohammedan  in  Spain,  spoke  of 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  159 

them  in  Basque  terms.  But  the  actual  things — the 
institutions — for  which  all  these  various  Latins, 
Basque,  German,  and  Celtic  words  stood  (the 
blood-fme,  the  scale  of  money — reparation  for  in- 
jury, division  of  society  into  "hundreds,"  the 
Council  advising  the  Chief,  etc.)  were  much  the 
same  throughout  the  body  of  Europe.  They  will 
always  reappear  wherever  men  of  our  European 
race  are  thrown  into  small,  warring  communities, 
avid  of  combat,  jealous  of  independence,  organ- 
ized under  a  military  aristocracy  and  reverent  of 
custom. 

Everywhere,  and  particularly  in  Britain,  the  Im- 
perial measurements  survived — the  measurement 
of  land,  the  units  of  money  and  of  length  and 
weight  were  all  Roman,  and  nowhere  more  than  in 
Eastern  Britain  during  the  Dark  Ages. 

Lastly,  let  the  reader  consider  the  curious  point 
of  language.  No  more  striking  simulacrum  of 
racial  unity  can  be  discovered  than  a  common  lan- 
guage or  set  of  languages;  but  it  is  a  simulacrum, 
and  a  simulacrum  only.  It  is  neither  a  proof  nor 
a  product  of  true  unity.  Language  passes  from 
conqueror  to  conquered,  from  conquered  to  con- 
queror, almost  indifferently.  Convenience,  acci- 
dent, and  many  a  mysterious  force  which  the  his- 
torian cannot  analyze,  propagates  it,  or  checks  it. 
Gaul,  thickly  populated,  organized  by  but  a  few 
garrisons  of  Roman  soldiers  and  one  army  corps 
of  occupation,  learns  to  talk  Latin  universally, 
almost  within  living  memory  of  the  Roman  con- 


160  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

quest.  Yet  two  corners  of  Gaul,  the  one  fertile  and 
rich,  the  other  barren,  America  and  the  Basque 
lands,  never  accept  Latin.  Africa,  though  thor- 
oughly colonized  from  Italy  and  penetrated  with 
Italian  blood  as  Gaul  never  was,  retains  the  Punic 
speech  century  after  century,  to  the  very  ends  of 
Roman  rule — seven  hundred  years  after  the  fall 
of  Carthage:  four  hundred  after  the  end  of  the 
Roman  Republic! 

Spain,  conquered  and  occupied  by  the  Moham- 
medan, and  settled  in  very  great  numbers  by  a 
highly  civilized  Oriental  race,  talks  today  a  Latin 
only  just  touched  by  Arabic  influence.  Lombardy. 
Gallic  in  blood  and  with  a  strong  infusion  of  re- 
peated Germanic  invasions  (very  much  larger  than 
ever  Britain  had!)  has  lost  all  trace  of  Gallic  ac- 
cent, even  in  language,  save  in  one  or  two  Alpine 
valleys,  and  of  German  speech  retains  nothing 
but  a  few  rare  and  doubtful  words.  The  plain  of 
Hungary  and  the  Carpathian  Mountains  are  a  tes- 
selated  pavement  of  languages  quite  dissimilar, 
Mongolian,  Teutonic,  Slav.  The  Balkan  States 
have,  not  upon  their  westward  or  European  side, 
but  at  their  extreme  opposite  limit,  a  population 
which  continues  the  memory  of  the  Empire  in  its 
speech;  and  the  vocabulary  of  the  Rumanians  is 
not  the  Greek  of  Byzantium,  which  civilized  them, 
but  the  Latin  of  Rome! 

The  most  implacable  of  Mohammedans  now 
under  French  rule  in  Algiers  speak,  and  have 
spoken  for  centuries,  not  Arabic  in  any  form,  but 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  161 

Berber;  and  the  same  speech  reappears  beyond  a 
wide  belt  of  Arabic  in  the  far  desert  to  the  south. 

The  Irish,  a  people  in  permanent  contrast  to  the 
English,  yet  talk  in  the  main  the  English  tongue. 

The  French-Canadians,  accepting  political  unity 
with  Britain,  retain  their  tongue  and  reject  Eng- 
lish. 

Look  where  we  will,  we  discover  in  regard  to 
language  something  as  incalculable  as  the  human 
will,  and  as  various  as  human  instinct.  The  de- 
liberate attempt  to  impose  it  has  nearly  always 
failed.  Sometimes  it  survives  as  the  result  of  a 
deliberate  policy.  Sometimes  it  is  restored  as  a 
piece  of  national  protest — Bohemia  is  an  example. 
Sometimes  it  "catches  on"  naturally  and  runs  for 
hundreds  of  miles  covering  the  most  varied  peo- 
ples and  even  the  most  varied  civilizations  with  a 
common  veil. 

Now  the  Roman  towns  were  not  destroyed,  the 
original  population  was  certainly  not  destroyed 
even  in  the  few  original  settlements  of  Saxon  and 
Angles  in  the  sea  and  river  shores  of  the  East. 
Such  civilization  as  the  little  courts  of  the  Pirate 
chieftains  maintained  was  degraded  Roman  or  it 
was  nothing.  But  the  so-called  "Anglo-Saxon" 
language — the  group  of  half-German^  dialects 
which  may  have  taken  root  before  the  withdrawal 

*I  say  "/jaZZ-German"  lest  the  reader  should  think,  by  the  use 
of  the  word  "German"  or  "Teutonic"  that  the  various  dialects 
of  this  sort  (including  those  of  the  North  Sea  Pirates)  were 
something  original,  uninfluenced  by  Rome.  It  must  always  be 
remembered  that  with  their  original   words  and  roots  was  mixed 


162  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

of  the  Roman  legions  in  the  East  of  Britain,  and 
which  at  any  rate  were  well  rooted  there  a  hun- 
dred years  after — stood  ready  for  one  of  two  fates. 
Either  it  would  die  out  and  be  replaced  by  dialects 
half  Celtic,  half  Latin  vocabulary,  or  it  would 
spread  westward.  That  the  Teutonic  dialects  of 
the  eastern  kinglets  should  spread  westward  might 
have  seemed  impossible.  The  unlettered  barbarian 
does  not  teach  the  lettered  civilized  man;  the 
pagan  does  not  mold  the  Christian.  It  is  the  other 
way  about.  Yet  in  point  of  fact  that  happened. 
Why? 

(Before  we  answer  that  question  let  us  consider 
anbther  point.  Side  by  side  with  the  entry  of 
civilization  through  the  Roman  missionary  priests 
in  Kent,  there  was  going  on  a  missionarj'  effort  in 
the  North  of  the  Island  of  Britain,  which  effort 
was  Irish.  It  had  various  Celtic  dialects  for  its 
common  daily  medium,  though  it  was,  of  course, 
Roman  in  ritual  at  the  altar.  The  Celtic  mission- 
aries, had  they  alone  been  in  the  field,  would  have 
made  us  all  Celtic  speaking  today.  But  it  was  the 
direct  mission  from  Rome  that  won,  and  this  for 
the  reason  that  it  had  behind  it  the  full  tide  of 
Europe.  Letters,  order,  law,  building,  schools,  re- 
entered England  through  Kent — not  through 
Northumberland  where  the  Irish  were  preaching. 
Even  so  the  spread  westward  of  a  letterless  and 

an  equal  mass  of  superior  words  learned  from  the  civilized  men 
of  tlie  Soutii  in  tlie  course  of  tiie  many  centuries  during  wiiich 
Germans  liad  served  tlie  Romans  as  slaves  and  in  arms  and  liad 
met  their  merchants. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  163 

starved  set  of  dialects  from  the  little  courts  of  the 
eastern  coasts  (from  Canterbury  and  Bamborough 
and  so  forth)  would  have  been  impossible  but  for 
a  tremendous  accident. 

rSt.  Augustine,  after  his  landing,  proposed  to  the 
native  British  bishops  that  they  should  help  in  the 
conversion  of  the  little  pagan  kinglets  and  their 
courts   on   the   eastern   coast.     They  would   not. 
They  had  been  cut  off  from  Europe  for  so  long 
that  they  had  become  warped.    They  refused  com- 
munion.    The   peaceful   Roman   Mission   coming 
just  at  the  moment  when  the  Empire  had  recov- 
ered   Italy   and   was    fully   restoring    itself,    was 
thrown  back  on  the  Eastern  courts.    It  used  them. 
It  backed  their  tongue,  their  arms,  their  tradition. 
The  terms  of  Roman  things  were  carefully  trans- 
lated by  the  priests  into  the  Teutonic  dialects  of 
these  courts;   the  advance  of  civilization  under  the 
missionaries,  recapturing  more  and  more  of  the 
province  of  Britain,  proceeded  westward  from  the 
courts  of  the  Eastern  kinglets.     The  schools,  the 
oflBcial  world — all — was  now  turned  by  the  weight 
of  the   Church   against  a   survival   of  the   Celtic 
tongues  and  in  favor  of  the  Eastern  Teutonic  ones. 
Once  civilization  had  come  back  by  way  of  the 
South  and  East,  principally  through  the  natural 
gate  of  Kent  and  through   the   Straits   of  Dover 
which  had  been  blocked  so  long,  this  tendency  of 
the  Eastern  dialects  to  spread  as  the  language  of 
an  organized  clerical  officialdom  and  of  its  courts 
of  law,  was  immediately   strengthened.     It   soon 


164  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

and  rapidly  swamped  all  but  the  western  hills. 
But  of  colonization,  of  the  advance  of  a  race,  there 
was  none.  What  advanced  was  the  Roman  organ- 
ization once  more  and,  with  it,  the  dialects  of  the 
courts  it  favored. 

What  we  know,  then,  of  Britain  when  it  was  re- 
civilized  we  know  through  Latin  terms  or  through 
the  half-German  dialects  which  ultimately  and 
much  later  merge  into  what  we  call  Anglo-Saxon. 
An  historic  King  of  Sussex  bears  a  Celtic  name, 
but  we  read  of  him  in  the  Latin,  then  in  the  Teu- 
tonic tongues,  and  his  realm,  however  feeble  the 
proportion  of  over-sea  blood  in  it,  bears  an  over- 
sea label  for  its  court — "the  South  Saxon." 

The  mythical  founder  of  Wessex  bears  a  Celtic 
name,  Cerdic :  but  we  read  of  him  if  not  in  Latin 
then  in  Anglo-Saxon.  Not  a  cantref  but  a  hundred 
is  the  term  of  social  organization  in  England  when 
it  is  re-civilized;  not  an  eglywys  but  a  church^  is 
the  name  of  the  building  in  which  the  new  civil- 
ization hears  Mass.  The  ruler,  whatever  his  blood 
or  the  blood  of  his  subjects,  is  a  Cynning,  not  a 
Reg  or  a  Prins.  His  house  and  court  are  a  hall^^ 
not  a  plds.  We  get  our  whole  picture  of  renovated 
Britain  (after  the  Church  is  restored)  colored  by 
this  half-German  speech.  But  the  Britain  we  see 
thus   colored  is   not   barbaric.      It  is   a   Christian 

•This  word  "church"  is  a  good  example  of  what  we  mean  by 
Teutonic  dialect.  It  is  straight  from  the  Mediterranean.  The 
native  German  word  for  a  temple^if  they  had  got  so  far  as 
to  have  temples  (for  we  know  nothing  of  their  religion) — is  lost. 

"And  "hall"  is  again  a  Roman  word  adopted  by  the  Germans. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  165 

Britain  of  mixed  origin,  of  ancient  municipalities 
cut  off  for  a  time  by  the  Pirate  occupation  of  the 
South  and  East,  but  now  reunited  with  the  one 
civilization  whose  root  is  in  Rome. 

This  clear  historical  conclusion  sounds  so  novel 
today  that  I  must  emphasize  and  confirm  it. 
^  Western  Europe  in  the  sixth,  seventh,  and 
eighth  centuries  was  largely  indifferent  to  our 
modern  ideas  of  race.  Of  nationality  it  knew 
nothing.  It  was  concerned  with  the  maintenance 
of  the  Catholic  Church  especially  against  the  outer 
Pagan;  This  filled  the  mind.  This  drove  all  the 
mastering  energies  of  the  time.  The  Church,  that 
is,  all  the  acts  of  life,  but  especially  record  and 
common  culture,  came  back  into  a  Britain  which 
had  been  cut  off.  It  reopened  the  gate.  It  was  re- 
fused aid  by  the  Christian  whom  it  relieved.  It 
decided  for  the  courts  of  the  South  and  East, 
taught  them  organization,  and  carried  their  dia- 
lects with  it  through  the  Island  which  it  gradually 
recovered  for  civilization. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  sum  up  our  conclu- 
sions upon  the  matter: 

Britain,  connected  with  the  rest  of  civilization 
by  a  narrow  and  precarious  neck  of  sea-travel  over 
the  Straits  of  Dover,  had,  in  the  last  centuries  of 
Roman  rule,  often  furnished  great  armies  to 
usurpers  or  Imperial  claimants,  sometimes  leaving 
the  Island  almost  bare  of  regular  troops.  But  with 
each  return  of  peace  these  armies  also  had  re- 
turned and  the  rule  of  the  central  Roman  govern- 


166  EUROPE  AMJ   THE  FAITH 

ment  over  Britain  had  been  fairly  continuous 
until  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century.  At  that 
moment — in  410  A.  D. — the  bulk  of  the  trained 
soldiers  again  left  upon  a  foreign  adventure.  But 
the  central  rule  of  Rome  was  then  breaking  down : 
these  regulars  never  returned — though  many  aux- 
iliary troops  may  have  remained. 

At  this  moment,  when  every  province  of  the 
West  was  subject  to  disturbance  and  to  the  over- 
running of  barbarian  bands,  small  but  destructive, 
Britain  particularly  suffered.  Scotch,  Irish  and 
German  barbarians  looted  her  on  all  sides. 

These  last,  the  Saxon  pirates,  brought  in  as 
auxiliaries  in  the  Roman  fashion,  may  already 
have  been  settled  in  places  upon  the  eastern  coast, 
their  various  half-German  dialects  may  have  al- 
ready been  common  upon  those  coasts;  but  at  any 
rate,  after  the  breakdown  of  the  Roman  order,  de- 
tached communities  under  little  local  chiefs  arose. 
The  towns  were  not  destroyed.  Neither  the  slaves, 
nor,  for  that  matter,  the  greater  part  of  the  free 
population  fell.  But  wealth  declined  rapidly  in  the 
chaos  as  it  did  throughout  Western  Europe.  And 
side  by  side  with  this  ruin  came  the  replacing  of 
the  Roman  oflBcial  language  by  a  welter  of  Celtic 
and  of  half-German  dialects  in  a  mass  of  little 
courts.  The  new  official  Roman  religion — cer- 
tainly at  the  moment  of  the  breakdown  the  re- 
ligion of  a  small  minority — almost  or  wholly  dis- 
appeared in  the  Eastern  pirate  settlements.  The 
Roman  language  similarly  disappeared  in  the  many 


EVROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  167 

small  principalities  of  the  western  part  of  the 
island;  they  reverted  to  their  original  Celtic  dia- 
lects. There  was  no  boundary  between  the  hotch- 
potch of  little  German-speaking  territories  on  the 
East  and  the  little  Celtic  territories  on  the  West. 
There  was  no  more  than  a  vague  common  feeling 
of  West  against  East  or  East  against  West;  all 
fought  indiscriminately  among  themselves. 

After  a  time  which  could  be  covered  by  two  long 
lives,  during  which  decline  had  been  very  rapid, 
and  as  noticeable  in  the  West  as  in  the  East 
throughout  the  Island,  the  full  influence  of  civil- 
ization returned,  with  the  landing  in  597  of  St. 
Augustine  and  his  missionaries  sent  by  the  Pope. 

But  the  little  Pirate  courts  of  the  East  happened 
to  have  settled  on  coasts  which  occupied  the  gate- 
way into  the  Island;  it  was  thus  through  them  that 
civilization  had  been  cut  off,  and  it  was  through 
them  that  civilization  came  back.  On  this  ac- 
count : 

"r(l)  The  little  kingdoms  tended  to  coalesce  under 
the  united  discipline  of  the  Church. 

(2)  The  united  British  civilization  so  forming 
was  able  to  advance  gradually  westward  across  the 
island. 

(3)  Though  the  institutions  of  Europe  were 
much  the  same  wherever  Roman  civilization  had 
existed  and  had  declined,  though  the  councils  of 
magnates  surrounding  the  King,  the  assemblies  of 
armed  men,  the  division  of  land  and  people  into 
"hundreds"   and  the  rest   of  it  were  common  to 


168  EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH 

Europe,  these  things  were  given,  over  a  wider  and 
wider  area  of  Britain,  Eastern,  half-German  names 
because  it  was  through  the  courts  of  the  Eastern 
kinglets  that  civilization  had  returned.  The  king- 
lets of  the  East,  as  civilization  grew,  were  con- 
tinually fed  from  the  Continent,  strengthened  with 
ideas,  institutions,  arts,  and  the  discipline  of  the 
Church  Thus  did  they  politically  become  more 
and  more  powerful,  until  the  whole  island,  except 
the  Coi-nish  peninsula,  Wales  and  the  Northwest- 
ern mountains,  was  more  or  less  administered  by 
the  courts  which  had  their  roots  in  the  eastern 
coasts  and  rivers,  and  which  spoke  dialects  cog- 
nate to  those  beyond  the  North  Sea,  while  the 
West,  cut  off  from  this  Latin  restoration,  decayed 
in  political  power  and  saw  its  Celtic  dialects  shrink 
in  area. 

By  the  time  that  this  old  Roman  province  of 
Britain  re-arises  as  an  ordered  Christian  land  in  the 
eighth  century,  its  records  are  kept  not  only  in 
Latin  but  in  the  Court  "Anglo-Saxon"  dialects :  by 
far  the  most  important  being  that  of  Winchester. 
Many  place  names,  and  the  general  speech  of  its 
inhabitants  have  followed  suit,  and  this,  a  super- 
ficial but  a  very  vivid  change,  is  the  chief  outward 
change  in  the  slow  transformation  that  has  been 
going  on  in  Britain  for  three  hundred  years  (450- 
500  to  750-800). 

Britain  is  reconquered  for  civilization  and  that 
easily;  it  is  again  an  established  part  of  the  Euro- 
pean unity,  with  the  same  sacraments,  the  same 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  169 

morals,  and  all  those  same  conceptions  of  human 
life  as  bound  Europe  together  even  more  firmly 
than  the  old  central  government  of  Rome  had 
bound  it.  And  within  this  unity  of  civilized  Chris- 
tendom England  was  to  remain  for  eight  hundred 
years.) 


VI 

The  Dark  Ages 

So  far  we  have  traced  the  fortunes  of  the  Roman 
Empire  (that  is  of  European  civilization  and  of 
the  Catholic  Church  with  which  that  civilization 
was  identified)  from  the  origins  both  of  the 
Church  and  of  the  Empire,  to  the  turning  point  of 
the  fifth  century.  We  have  seen  the  character  of 
that  turning  point. 

There  was  a  gradual  decline  in  the  power  of  the 
central  monarchy,  an  increasing  use  of  auxiliary 
barbarian  troops  in  the  army  upon  which  Roman 
society  was  founded,  until  at  last  (in  the  years 
from  400  to  500  A.  D.)  authority,  though  Roman 
in  every  detail  of  its  form,  gradually  ceased  to  be 
exercised  from  Rome  or  Constantinople,  but  fell 
imperceptibly  into  the  hands  of  a  number  of  local 
governments.  We  have  seen  that  the  administra- 
tion of  these  local  governments  usually  devolved 
on  the  chief  officers  of  the  auxiliary  barbarian 
troops,  who  were  also,  as  a  rule,  their  chieftains 
by  some  kind  of  inheritance. 

We  have  seen  that  there  was  no  considerable 
infiltration  of  barbarian  blood,  no  "invasions"  in 
our  modern  sense  of  the  term — (or  rather,  no  suc- 
cessful ones) ;    no  blotting  out  of  civilization,  still 

170 


EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH  171 

less  any  introduction  of  new  institutions  or  ideas 
drawn  from  barbarism. 

The  coast  regions  of  Eastern  Britain  (the  strong- 
est example  of  all,  for  there  the  change  was  most 
severe)  were  reconquered  for  civilization  and  for 
the  Faith  by  the  efforts  of  St.  Augustine;  Africa 
was  recaptured  for  the  direct  rule  of  the  Em- 
peror: so  was  Italy  and  the  South  of  Spain.  At 
the  end  of  the  seventh  century  that  which  was  in 
the  future  to  be  called  Christendom  (and  which 
is  nothing  more  than  the  Roman  Empire  continu- 
ing though  transformed)  is  again  reunited. 

What  followed  was  a  whole  series  of  generations 
in  which  the  forms  of  civilization  were  set  and 
crystallized  in  a  few  very  simple,  traditional  and 
easily  appreciated  types.  The  whole  standard  of 
Europe  was  lowered  to  the  level  of  its  funda- 
mentals, as  it  were.  The  primary  arts  upon  which 
we  depend  for  our  food  and  drink,  and  raiment 
and  shelter  survived  intact.  The  secondary  arts 
reposing  upon  these,  failed  and  disappeared  almost 
in  proportion  to  their  distance  from  fundamental 
necessities  of  our  race.  History  became  no  more 
than  a  simple  chronicle.  Letters,  in  the  finer 
sense,  almost  ceased.  Four  hundred  years  more 
were  to  pass  before  Europe  was  to  reawaken 
from  this  sort  of  sleep  into  which  her  spirit  had 
retreated,  and  the  passage  from  the  full  civiliza- 
tion of  Rome  through  this  period  of  simple  and 
sometimes  barbarous  things,  is  properly  called  the 
Dark  Ages. 


172  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Cli  is  of  great  importance  for  anyone  who  would 
comprehend  the  general  story  of  Europe,  to  grasp 
the  nature  of  those  half-hidden  centuries.  They 
may  be  compared  to  a  lake  into  which  the  activ- 
ities of  the  old  world  flowed  and  stirred  and  then 
were  still,  and  from  which  in  good  time  the  activ- 
ities of  the  Middle  Ages,  properly  so  called,  were 
again  to  flow. 

Again  one  may  compare  the  Dark  Ages  to  the 
leafsoil  of  a  forest.  They  are  formed  by  the  dis- 
integration of  an  antique  florescence.  They  are 
the  bed  from  which  new  florescence  shall  spring. 

It  is  a  curious  phenomenon  to  consider:  this 
hibernation,  or  sleep:  this  rest  of  the  stuff  of 
Europe.  It  leads  one  to  consider  the  flux  and  re- 
flux of  civilization  as  something  much  more  com- 
parable to  a  pulse  than  to  a  growth.  It  makes  us 
remember  that  rhythm  which  is  observed  in  all 
forms  of  energy.  It  makes  us  doubt  that  mere 
progress  from  simplicity  to  complexity  which 
used  to  be  affirmed  as  the  main  law  of  history. 
i  The  contemplation  of  the  Dark  Ages  affords  a 
powerful  criticism  of  that  superficial  theory  of 
social  evolution  which  is  among  the  intellectual 
plagues  of  our  own  generation.  Much  more  is 
the  story  of  Europe  like  the  waking  and  the  sleep- 
ing of  a  mature  man,  than  like  any  indefinite  in- 
crease in  the  aptitudes  and  powers  of  a  growing 
body. 

Though  the  prime  characteristic  of  the  Dark 
Ages  is  one  of  recollection,  and  though  they  are 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  173 

chiefly  marked  by  this  note  of  Europe  sinking 
back  into  herself,  very  much  more  must  be  known 
of  them  before  we  have  the  truth,  even  in  its  most 
general  form. 

I  will  put  in  the  form  of  a  category  or  list  the 
chief  points  which  we  must  bear  in  mind. 

In  the  first  place  the  Dark  Ages  were  a  period 
of  intense  military  action.  Christendom  was  be- 
sieged from  all  around.  It  was  held  like  a  strong- 
hold, and  in  those  centuries  of  struggle  its  institu- 
tions were  molded  by  military  necessities:  so  that 
Christendom  has  ever  since  had  about  it  the  qual- 
ity of  a  soldier.  There  was  one  unending  series 
of  attacks.  Pagan  and  Mohammedan,  from  the 
North,  from  the  East  and  from  the  South;  attacks 
not  comparable  to  the  older  raids  of  external 
hordes,  eager  only  to  enjoy  civilization  within  the 
Empire,  small  in  number  and  yet  ready  to  accept 
the  faith  and  customs  of  Europe.  The  barbarian 
incursions  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries — at  the 
end  of  the  United  Roman  Empire — had  been  of 
this  lesser  kind.  The  mighty  struggles  of  the 
eighth,  ninth  and  especially  the  tenth  centuries — 
of  the  Dark  Ages — were  a  very  difTerent  matter. 
Had  the  military  institutions  of  Europe  failed  in 
that  struggle,  our  civilization  would  have  been 
wiped  out;  and  indeed  at  one  or  two  critical 
points,  as  in  the  middle  of  the  eighth  against  the 
Mohammedan,  and  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  century 
against  the  northern  pirates,  all  human  judgment 
would  have  decided  that  Europe  was  doomed. 


174  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

In  point  of  fact,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  moment, 
Europe  was  just  barely  saved.  It  was  saved  by  the 
sword  and  by  the  intense  Christian  ideal  which 
nerved  the  sword  arm.  But  it  was  only  just 
barely  saved. 

The  first  assault  came  from  Islam. 
Pa  new  intense  and  vividly  anti-Christian  thing 
arose  in  a  moment,  as  it  were,  out  of  nothing,  out 
of  the  hot  sands  to  the  East  and  spread  like  a  fire. 
It  consumed  all  the  Levant.  It  arrived  at  the 
doors  of  the  West.  This  was  no  mere  rush  of 
barbarism.  The  Mohammedan  world  was  as  cul- 
tured as  our  own  in  its  first  expansion.  It  main- 
tained a  higher  and  an  increasing  culture  while 
ours  declined;  and  its  conquest,  where  it  con- 
quered us,  was  the  conquest  of  something  ma- 
terially superior  for  the  moment  over  the  remain- 
ing arts  and  traditions  of  Christian  Europe. 

Just  at  the  moment  when  Britain  was  finally 
won  back  to  Europe,  and  when  the  unity  of  the 
West  seemed  to  be  recovered  (though  its  life  had 
fallen  to  so  much  lower  a  plane),  we  lost  North 
Africa;  it  was  swept  from  end  to  end  in  one  tidal 
rush  by  that  new  force  which  aimed  fiercely  at 
our  destruction.  Immediately  afterwards  the  first 
Mohammedan  force  crossed  the  Straits  of  Gibral- 
tar; and  in  a  few  months  after  its  landing  the 
whole  of  the  Spanish  Peninsula,  that  strong  Rock 
as  it  had  seemed  of  ancient  Roman  culture,  the 
hard  Iberian  land,  crumbled.  Politically,  at  least, 
and  right  up  to  the  Pyrenees,  Asia  had  it  in  its 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  175 

grip,  in  the  mountain  valleys  alone,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  tangle  of  highlands  which  occupies  the 
northwestern  corner  of  the  Spanish  square,  indi- 
vidual communities  of  soldiers  held  out.  From 
these  the  gradual  reconquest  of  Spain  by  Christen- 
dom was  to  proceed,  but  for  the  moment  they  were 
crowded  and  penned  upon  the  Asturian  hills  like 
men  fighting  against  a  wall. 

Even  Gaul  was  threatened:  a  Mohammedan 
host  poured  up  into  its  very  centre  far  beyond 
Poitiers:  halfway  to  Tours.  Luckily  it  was  de- 
feated; but  Moslem  garrisons  continued  to  hold 
out  in  the  Southern  districts,  in  the  northern 
fringes  of  the  Pyrenees  and  along  the  shore  line 
of  the  Narbonese  and  Provence. 

Southern  Italy  was  raided  and  partly  occupied. 
The  islands  of  the  Mediterranean  fell. 

Against  this  sudden  successful  spring  which 
had  lopped  off  half  of  the  West,  the  Dark  Ages, 
and  especially  the  French  of  the  Dark  Ages,  spent 
a  great  part  of  their  military  energy.  The  knights 
of  Northern  Spain  and  the  chiefs  of  the  uncon- 
quered  valleys  recruited  their  forces  perpetually 
from  Gaul  beyond  the  Pyrenees,  and  the  northern 
valley  of  the  Ebro,  the  high  plains  of  Castile  and 
Leon,  were  the  training  ground  of  European  valor 
for  three  hundred  years.  The  Basques  were  the 
unyielding  basis  of  all  the  advance. 

This  Mohammedan  swoop  was  the  first  and 
most  disastrously  successful  of  the  three  great  as- 
saults. 


176  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Next  came  the  Scandinavian  pirates. 

Their  descent  was  a  purely  barbaric  thing,  not 
numerous  but  (since  pirates  can  destroy  much 
with  small  numbers)  for  centuries  unexhausted. 
They  harried  all  the  rivers  and  coasts  of  Britain, 
of  Gaul,  and  of  the  Netherlands.  They  appeared 
in  the  Southern  seas  and  their  efforts  seemed  inde- 
fatigable. Britain  especially  (where  the  raiders 
bore  the  local  name  of  "Danes")  suffered  from  a 
ceaseless  pillage,  and  these  new  enemies  had  no 
attraction  to  the  Roman  land  save  loot.  They 
merely  destroyed.  They  refused  our  religion. 
Had  they  succeeded  they  would  not  have  mingled 
with  us,  but  would  have  ended  us. 

Both  in  Northern  Gaul  and  in  Britain  their  chief- 
tains acquired  something  of  a  foothold,  but  only 
after  the  perilous  moment  in  which  their  armies 
were  checked;  they  were  tamed  ancl  constrained 
to  accept  the  society  they  had  attacked. 

This  critical  moment  when  Europe  seemed 
doomed  was  the  last  generation  of  the  ninth  cen- 
tury. France  had  been  harried  up  to  the  gates 
of  Paris.  Britain  was  so  raided  that  its  last  inde- 
pendent king,  Alfred,  was  in  hiding. 

Both  in  Britain  and  Gaul  Christendom  tri- 
umphed and  in  the  same  generation. 

Paris  stood  a  successful  siege,  and  the  family 
which  defended  it  was  destined  to  become  the 
royal  family  of  all  France  at  the  inception  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  Alfred  of  Wessex  in  the  same  dec- 
ade recovered  South  England.     In  both  provinces 


EUROPE  AMD  THE  FAITH  177 

of  Christendom  the  situation  was  saved.  The 
chiefs  of  the  pirates  were  baptized;  and  though 
Northern  barbarism  remained  a  material  menace 
for  another  hundred  years,  there  was  no  further 
danger  of  our  destruction. 

Finally,  less  noticed  by  history,  but  quite  as 
grievous,  and  needing  a  defence  as  gallant,  was  the 
pagan  advance  over  the  North  German  Plain  and 
up  the  valley  of  the  Danube. 

All  the  frontier  of  Christendom  upon  this  line 
from  Augsburg  and  the  Lech  to  the  course  of  the 
Elbe  and  the  North  Sea,  was  but  a  line  of  fortresses 
and  continual  battlefields.  It  was  but  recently  or- 
ganized land.  Until  the  generations  before  the 
year  800  there  was  no  civilization  beyond  the 
Rhine  save  the  upper  Danube  partially  reclaimed, 
and  a  very  scanty  single  extension  up  the  valley  of 
the  Lower  Main. 

But  Charlemagne,  with  vast  Gallic  armies,  broke 
into  the  barbaric  Germanies  right  up  to  the  Elbe. 
He  compelled  them  by  arms  to  accept  religion,  let- 
ters and  arts.  He  extended  Europe  to  these  new 
boundaries  and  organized  them  as  a  sort  of  ram- 
part in  the  East:  a  thing  the  Roman  Empire  had 
not  done.  The  Church  was  the  cement  of  this  new 
belt  of  defence — the  imperfect  population  of 
which  were  evangelized  from  Ireland  and  Britain. 
It  was  an  experiment,  this  creation  of  the  Ger- 
manies by  Western  culture,  this  spiritual  coloniza- 
tion of  a  March  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Empire. 
It  did  not  completely  succeed,  as  the  Reformation 


178  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

proves;  but  it  had  at  least  the  strength  in  the  cen- 
tury after  Charlemagne,  its  founder,  to  withstand 
the  Eastern  attack  upon  Christendom. 

The  attack  was  not  racial.  It  was  Pagan  Slav, 
mixed  with  much  that  was  left  of  Pagan  German, 
even  Mongol.  Its  character  was  the  advance  of 
the  savage  against  the  civilized  man,  and  it  re- 
mained a  peril  two  generations  longer  than  the 
peril  which  Gaul  and  Britain  had  staved  off  from 
the  North. 

This,  then,  is  the  first  characteristic  to  be  re- 
membered of  the  Dark  Ages:  the  violence  of  the 
physical  struggle  and  the  intense  physical  effort  by 
which  Europe  was  saved. 

The  second  characteristic  of  the  Dark  Ages  pro- 
ceeds from  this  first  military  one :  it  may  be  called 
Feudalism. 

Briefly  it  was  this :  the  passing  of  actual  govern- 
ment from  the  hands  of  the  old  Roman  provincial 
centres  of  administration  into  the  hands  of  each 
small  local  society  and  its  lord.  On  such  a  basis 
there  was  a  reconstruction  of  society  from  below: 
these  local  lords  associating  themselves  under 
greater  men,  and  these  again  holding  together  in 
great  national  groups  under  a  national  overlord. 

In  the  violence  of  the  struggle  through  which 
Christendom  passed,  town  and  village,  valley  and 
castle,  had  often  to  defend  itself  alone. 

The  great  Roman  landed  estates,  with  their 
masses  of  dependents  and  slaves,  under  a  lord  or 
owner,  had  never  disappeared.     The  descendants 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  179 

of  these  JRoman,  Gallic,  British,  owners  formed  the 
fighting  class  of  the  Dark  Ages,  and  in  this  new 
function  of  theirs,  perpetually  lifted  up  to  be  the 
sole  depositories  of  authority  in  some  small  im- 
periled countryside,  they  grew  to  be  nearly  inde- 
pendent units.  For  the  purposes  of  cohesion  that 
family  which  possessed  most  estates  in  a  district 
tended  to  become  the  leader  of  it.  Whole  prov- 
inces were  thus  formed  and  grouped,  and  the 
vaguer  sentiments  of  a  larger  unity  expressed 
themselves  by  the  choice  of  some  one  family,  one 
of  the  most  powerful  in  every  county,  who  would 
be  the  overlord  of  all  the  other  lords,  great  and 
small. 

Side  by  side  with  this  growth  of  local  independ- 
ence^and  of  voluntary  local  groupings,  went  the 
transformation  of  the  old  imperial  nominated  of- 
fices into  hereditary  and  personal  things. 

A  count,  for  instance,  was  originally  a  "comes" 
or  "companion"  of  the  Emperor.  The  word  dates 
from  long  before  the  break-up  of  the  central  au- 
thority of  Rome.  A  count  later  was  a  great  ofiB- 
cial:  a  local  governor  and  judge — the  Vice-Roy  of 
a  large  district  (a  French  county  and  English 
shire).  His  ofRce  was  revocable,  like  other  official 
appointments.  He  was  appointed  for  a  season, 
first  at  the  Emperor's,  later  at  the  local  King's 
discretion,  to  a  particular  local  government.  In 
the  Dark  Ages  the  count  becomes  hereditary.  He 
thinks  of  his  government  as  a  possession  which 
his  son  should  rightly  have  after  him.     He  bases 


180  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

his  right  to  his  government  upon  the  possession 
of  great  estates  within  the  area  of  that  govern- 
ment. In  a  word,  he  comes  to  think  of  himself 
not  as  an  official  at  all  but  as  a  feudal  overlord, 
and  all  society  (and  the  remaining  shadow  of  cen- 
tral authority  itself)  agrees  with  him. 

The  second  note,  then,  of  the  Dark  Ages  is  the 
gradual  transition  of  Christian  society  from  a  num- 
ber of  slave-owning,  rich,  landed  proprietors, 
taxed  and  administered  by  a  regular  government, 
to  a  society  of  fighting  nobles  and  their  descend- 
ants, organized  upon  a  basis  of  independence  and 
in  a  hierarchy  of  lord  and  overlord,  and  supported 
no  longer  by  slaves  in  the  villages,  but  by  half-free 
serfs  or  "villeins.'* 

Later  an  elaborate  theory  was  constructed  in 
order  to  rationalize  this  living  and  real  thing.  It 
was  pretended — by  a  legal  fiction — that  the  cen- 
tral King  owned  nearly  all  the  land,  that  the  great 
overlords  "held"  their  land  of  him,  the  lesser  lords 
"holding"  theirs  hereditarily  of  the  overlords,  and 
so  forth.  This  idea  of  "holding"  instead  of  "own- 
ing," though  it  gave  an  easy  machinery  for  con- 
fiscation in  time  of  rebellion,  was  legal  theory  only, 
and,  so  far  as  men's  views  of  property  went,  a 
mere  form.  The  reality  was  what  I  have 
described. 

The  third  characteristic  of  the  Dark  Ages  was 
the  curious  fixity  of  morals,  of  traditions,  of  the 
forms  of  religion,  and  of  all  that  makes  up  social 
life. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  181 

We  may  presume  that  all  civilization  originally 
sprang  from  a  soil  in  which  custom  was  equally 
permanent. 

We  know  that  in  the  great  civilizations  of  the 
East  an  enduring  fixity  of  form  is  normal. 

But  in  the  general  history  of  Europe,  it  has  been 
otherwise.  There  has  been  a  perpetual  flux  in 
the  outward  form  of  things,  in  architecture,  in 
dress,  and  in  the  statement  of  philosophy  as  well 
(though  not  in  its  fundamentals). 

In  this  mobile  surface  of  European  history  the 
Dark  Ages  form  a  sort  of  island  of  changelessness. 
There  is  an  absence  of  any  great  heresies  in  the 
West,  and,  save  in  one  or  two  names,  an  absence 
of  speculation.  It  was  as  though  men  had  no  time 
for  any  other  activity  but  the  ceaseless  business  of 
arms  and  of  the  defence  of  the  West. 

Consider  the  life  of  Charlemagne,  who  is  the 
central  figure  of  those  centuries.  It  is  spent  al- 
most entirely  in  the  saddle.  One  season  finds  him 
upon  the  Elbe,  the  next  upon  the  Pyrenees.  One 
Easter  he  celebrates  in  Northern  Gaul,  another  in 
Rome.  The  whole  story  is  one  of  perpetual 
marching,  and  of  blows  parrying  here,  thrusting 
there,  upon  all  the  boundaries  of  isolated  and  be- 
sieged Christendom.  He  will  attend  to  learning, 
but  the  ideal  of  learning  is  repetitive  and  conserva- 
tive :  its  passion  is  to  hold  what  was,  not  to  create 
or  expand.  An  anxious  and  sometimes  desperate 
determination  to  preserve  the  memory  of  a  great 
but  half-forgotten  past  is  the  business  of  his  court. 


182  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

which  dissolves  just  before  the  worst  of  the  Pagan 
assault;  as  it  is  the  business  of  Alfred,  who  arises 
a  century  later,  just  after  the  worst  assault  has 
been  finally  repelled. 

Religion  during  these  centuries  settled  and  con- 
solidated, as  it  were.  An  enemy  would  say  that  it 
petrified,  a  friend  that  it  was  enormously  strength- 
ened by  pressure.  But  whatever  the  metaphor 
chosen,  the  truth  indicated  will  be  this:  that  ths- 
Catholic  Faith  became  between  the  years  600  and 
1000  utterly  one  with  Europe.  The  last  vestiges  of 
the  antique  and  Pagan  civilization  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean were  absorbed.  A  habit  of  certitude  and  of 
fixity  even  in  the  details  of  thought  was  formed  in 
the  European  mind. 

lit  is  to  be  noted  in  this  connection  that  geo- 
graphically the  centre  of  things  had  somewhat 
shifted.  With  the  loss  of  Spain  and  of  Northern 
Africa,  the  Mohammedan  raiding  of  Southern 
Italy  and  the  islands,  the  Mediterranean  was  no 
longer  a  vehicle  of  Western  civilization,  but  the 
frontier  of  it.  Rome  itself  might  now  be  regarded 
as  a  frontier  town.  The  eruption  of  the  bar- 
barians from  the  East  along  the  Danube  had 
singularly  cut  off  the  Latin  West  from  Constanti- 
nople and  from  all  the  high  culture  of  its  Empire. 
Therefore,  the  centre  of  that  which  resisted  in  the 
West,  the  geographical  nucleus  of  the  island  of 
Christendom,  which  was  besieged  all  round,  was 
France,  and  in  particular  Northern  France.  North- 
ern Italy,  the  Germanics,  the  Pyrenees  and  the  up- 


EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH  183 

per  valley  of  the  Ebro  were  essentially  the  marches 
of  Gaul.  Gaul  was  to  preserve  all  that  could  be 
preserved  of  the  material  side  of  Europe,  and  also 
of  the  European  spirit.  And  therefore  the  New 
World,  when  it  arose,  with  its  Gothic  Architecture, 
its  Parliaments,  its  Universities,  and,  in  general, 
its  spring  of  the  Middle  Ages,  was  to  be  a  Gallic 
thing. 

The  fourth  characteristic  of  the  Dark  Ages  was 
a  material  one,  and  was  that  which  would  strike 
our  eyes  most  immediately  if  we  could  transfer 
ourselves  in  time,  and  enjoy  a  physical  impression 
of  that  world.  This  characteristic  was  derived 
from  what  I  have  just  been  saying.  It  was  the 
material  counterpart  of  the  moral  immobility  or 
steadfastness  of  the  time.  It  was  this:  that  the 
external  forms  of  things  stood  quite  unchanged. 
The  semi-circular  arch,  the  short,  stout  pillar,  oc- 
casionally (but  rarely)  the  dome:  these  were 
everywhere  the  mark  of  architecture.  There  was 
no  change  nor  any  attempt  at  change.  The  arts 
were  saved  but  not  increased,  and  the  whole  of 
the  work  that  men  did  with  their  hands  stood  fast 
in  mere  tradition.  No  new  town  arises.  If  one 
is  mentioned  (Oxford,  for  instance)  for  the  first 
time  in  the  Dark  Ages,  whether  in  Britain  or  in 
Gaul,  one  may  fairly  presume  a  Roman  origin  for 
it,  even  though  there  be  no  actual  mention  of  it 
handed  down  from  Roman  times. 

No  new  roads  were  laid.  The  old  Roman  mili- 
tary system  of  highways  was  kept  up  and  repaired. 


184  EUROPE  A^'D  THE  FAITH 

though  kept  up  and  repaired  with  a  declining 
vigor.  The  wheel  of  European  life  had  settled  to 
one  slow  rate  of  turning. 

LNot  onlj'  were  all  these  forms  enduring,  they 
were  also  few  and  simple.  One  type  of  public 
building  and  of  church,  one  type  of  writing,  every- 
where recognizable,  one  type  of  agriculture,  with 
very  few  products  to  differentiate  it,  alone  re- 
mained. 

The  fifth  characteristic  of  the  Dark  Ages  is  one 
apparently,  but  only  apparently,  contradictory  of 
that  immobile  and  fundamental  character  which  I 
have  just  been  describing.  It  is  this:  the  Dark 
Ages  were  the  point  during  which  there  very 
gradually  germinated  and  came  into  outward  ex- 
istence things  which  still  remain  among  us  and 
help  to  differentiate  our  Christendom  from  the 
past  of  classical  antiquity. 

This  is  true  of  certain  material  things.  The 
spur,  the  double  bridle,  the  stirrup,  the  book  in 
leaves  distinct  from  the  old  roll — and  very  much 
else.  It  is  true  of  the  road  system  of  Europe 
wherever  that  road  system  has  departed  from  the 
old  Roman  scheme.  It  was  in  the  Dark  Ages  with 
the  gradual  break-down  of  expensive  causeways 
over  marshes;  with  the  gradual  decline  of  certain 
centres;  with  bridges  left  unrepaired;  culverts 
choked  and  making  a  morass  against  the  dam  of 
the  roads,  that  you  got  the  deflection  of  the  great 
ways.  In  almost  every  broad  river  valley  in  Eng- 
land, where  an  old  Roman  road  crosses  the  stream 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  185 

and  its  low-lying  banks,  you  may  see  something 
which  the  Dark  Ages  left  to  us  in  our  road  system: 
you  may  see  the  modern  road  leaving  the  old  Ro- 
man line  and  picking  its  way  across  the  wet  lands 
from  one  drier  point  to  another,  and  rejoining 
the  Roman  line  beyond.  It  is  a  thing  you  will  see 
in  almost  anyone  of  our  Strettons,  Stanfords, 
Stamfords,  Staffords,  etc.,  which  everywhere  mark 
the  crossing  of  a  Roman  road  over  a  water  course. 

But  much  more  than  in  material  things  the  Dark 
Ages  set  a  mold  wherein  the  European  mind  grew. 
For  instance,  it  was  they  that  gave  to  us  two  forms 
of  legend.  The  one  something  older  than  history, 
older  than  the  Roman  order,  something  Western 
reappearing  with  the  release  of  the  mind  from  the 
rigid  accuracy  of  a  high  civilization;  the  other  that 
legend  which  preserves  historical  truth  under  a 
guise  of  phantasy. 

Of  the  first,  the  British  story  of  Tristan  is  one 
example  out  of  a  thousand.  Of  the  second,  the 
legend  of  Constantine,  which  gradually  and  uncon- 
sciously developed  into  the  famous  Donation. 

The  Dark  Ages  gave  us  that  wealth  of  story 
coloring  and  enlivening  all  our  European  life,  and 
what  is  more,  largely  preserving  historic  truth; 
for  nothing  is  more  valuable  to  true  history  than 
legend.  They  also  gave  us  our  order  in  speech. 
Great  hosts  of  words  unknown  to  antiquity  sprang 
up  naturally  among  the  people  when  the  force  of 
the  classical  centre  failed.  Some  of  them  were 
words  of  the  languages  before  the  Roman  armies 


186  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

came — cask,  for  instance,  the  old  Iberian  word. 
Some  of  them  were  the  camp  talk  of  the  soldiers. 
Spade,  for  instance,  and  "ipee,"  the  same  piece  of 
Greek  slang,  "the  broad  one,"  which  has  come  to 
mean  in  French  a  sword;  in  English  that  with 
which  we  dig  the  earth.  Masses  of  technical  words 
in  the  old  Roman  laws  turned  into  popular  usage 
through  that  appetite  the  poor  have  for  long  offi- 
cial phrases:  for  instance,  our  English  words  wild, 
weald,  wold,  waste,  gain,  rider,  rode,  ledge,  say, 
and  a  thousand  others,  all  branch  out  from  the 
lawyers'  phrases  of  the  later  Roman  Empire. 

In  this  closed  crucible  of  the  Dark  Ages  crystal- 
lized also — by  a  process  which  we  cannot  watch, 
or  of  which  we  have  but  glimpses — that  rich  mass 
of  jewels,  the  local  customs  of  Europe,  and  even 
the  local  dress,  which  differentiates  one  place  from 
another,  when  the  communications  of  a  high  mate- 
rial civilization  break  down.  In  all  this  the  Dark 
Ages  are  a  comfort  to  the  modern  man,  for  he  sees 
by  their  example  that  the  process  of  increasing 
complexity  reaches  its  term;  that  the  strain  of  de- 
velopment is  at  last  relieved;  that  humanity  sooner 
or  later  returns  upon  itself;  that  there  is  an  end 
in  repose  and  that  the  repose  is  fruitful. 

The  last  characteristic  of  the  Dark  Ages  is  that 
which  has  most  engrossed,  puzzled,  and  warped 
the  judgment  of  non-Catholic  historians  when  they 
have  attempted  a  conspectus  of  European  develop- 
ment; it  was  the  segregation,  the  homogeneity  of 
and  the  dominance  of  clerical  organization. 

/ 


EUROPE  AND  THE  I  WITH  187 

The  hierarchy  of  the  Church,  its  unity  and  its 
sense  of  discipline  was  the  chief  civil  institution 
and  the  chief  binding  social  force  of  the  times. 
Side  by  side  with  it  went  the  establishment  of  the 
monastic  institution  which  everywhere  took  on  a 
separate  life  of  its  own,  preserved  what  could  be 
preserved  of  arts  and  letters,  drained  the  marshes 
and  cleared  the  forests,  and  formed  the  ideal  eco- 
nomic unit  for  such  a  period;  almost  the  only 
economic  unit  in  which  capital  could  then  be  ac- 
cumulated and  preserved.  The  great  order  of  St. 
Benedict  formed  a  framework  of  living  points  upon 
which  was  stretched  the  moral  life  of  Europe. 
The  vast  and  increasing  endowments  of  great  and 
fixed  religious  houses  formed  the  economic  fly- 
wheel of  those  centuries.  They  were  the  granary 
and  the  storehouse.  But  for  the  monks,  the  fluctu- 
ations proceeding  from  raid  and  from  decline 
would,  in  their  violence,  at  some  point  or  another, 
have  snapped  the  chain  of  economic  tradition,  and 
we  should  all  have  fallen  into  barbarism. 

Meanwhile  the  Catholic  hierarchy  as  an  institu- 
tion— I  have  already  called  it  by  a  violent  meta- 
phor, a  civil  institution — at  any  rate  as  a  political 
institution — remained  absolute  above  the  social 
disintegration  of  the  time. 

All  natural  things  were  slowly  growing  up  un- 
checked and  disturbing  the  strict  lines  of  the  old 
centralized  governmental  order  which  men  still  re- 
membered. In  language  Europe  was  a  medley  of 
infinitely  varying  local  dialects. 


188  EUROPE  AXD   THE  FAITH 

I  Thousands  upon  thousands  of  local  customs 
were  coming  to  be  separate  laws  in  each  separate 
village. 

^Legend,  as  I  have  said,  was  obscuring  fixed  his- 
tory. The  tribal  basis  from  which  we  spring  was 
thrusting  its  instincts  back  into  the  strict  and  ra- 
tional Latin  fabric  of  the  State.  Status  was  every- 
where replacing  contract,  and  habit  replacing  a 
reason  for  things.  Above  this  medley  the  only 
absolute  organization  that  could  be  was  that  of  the 
Church.  The  Papacy  was  the  one  centre  whose 
shifting  could  not  even  be  imagined.  The  Latin 
tongue,  in  the  late  form  in  which  the  Church  used 
it,  was  everywhere  the  same,  and  everywhere 
suited  to  rituals  that  differed  but  slightly  from 
province  to  province  when  we  contrast  them  with 
the  millioned  diversity  of  local  habit  and  speech. 

Whenever  a  high  civilization  was  to  re-arise 
out  of  the  soil  of  the  Dark  Ages,  it  was  certain  first 
to  show  a  full  organization  of  the  Church  under 
some  Pope  of  exceptional  vigor,  and  next  to  show 
that  Pope,  or  his  successors  in  this  tradition,  at 
issue  with  new  civil  powers.  Whenever  central 
government  should  rise  again  and  in  whatever 
form,  a  conflict  would  begin  between  the  new 
kings  and  the  clerical  organization  which  had  so 
strengthened  itself  during  the  Dark  Ages. 

Now  Europe,  as  we  know,  did  awake  from  its 
long  sleep.  The  eleventh  century  was  the  moment 
of  its  awakening.  Three  great  forces — the  per- 
sonality of  St.  Gregory  VII.,  the  appearance  (by  a 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  189 

happy  accident  of  slight  cross  hreeding:  a  touch 
of  Scandinavian  blood  added  to  the  French  race) 
of  the  Norman  race,  finally  the  Crusades — drew 
out  of  the  darkness  the  enormous  vigor  of  the 
early  Middle  Ages.  They  were  to  produce  an  in- 
tense and  active  civilization  of  their  own;  a  civili- 
zation which  was  undoubtedly  the  highest  and  the 
best  our  race  has  known,  conformable  to  the  in- 
stincts of  the  European,  fulfilling  his  nature,  giv- 
ing him  that  happiness  which  is  the  end  of  men. 

As  we  also  know,  Europe  on  this  great  experi- 
ment of  the  Middle  Ages,  after  four  hundred  years 
of  high  vitality,  was  rising  to  still  greater  heights 
when  it  suffered  shipwreck. 

With  that  disaster,  the  disaster  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, I  shall  deal  later  in  this  series. 

In  my  next  chapter  I  shall  describe  the  inception 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  show  what  they  were  be- 
fore our  promise  in  them  was  ruined. 


VII 

The  Middle  Ages 

I  SAID  in  my  last  chapter  that  the  Dark  Ages 
might  be  compared  to  a  long  sleep  of  Europe:  a 
sleep  lasting  from  the  fatigue  of  the  old  society  in 
the  fifth  century  to  the  spring  and  rising  of  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth.  The  metaphor  is  far  too 
simple,  of  course,  for  that  sleep  was  a  sleep  of 
war.  In  all  those  centuries  Europe  was  des- 
perately holding  its  own  against  the  attack  of  all 
that  desired  to  destroy  it :  refined  and  ardent  Islam 
from  the  South,  letterless  barbarian  pagans  from 
the  East  and  North.  At  any  rate,  from  that  sleep 
or  that  besieging  Europe  awoke  or  was  relieved. 

I  said  that  three  great  forces,  humanly  speaking, 
worked  this  miracle;  the  personality  of  St.  Greg- 
ory VII.;  the  brief  appearance,  by  a  happy  acci- 
dent, of  the  Norman  State;  and  finally  the 
Crusades. 

(  The  Normans  of  history,  the  true  French  Nor- 
mans we  know,  are  stirring  a  generation  after  the 
year  1000.  St.  Gregory  filled  that  same  genera- 
tion. He  was  a  young  man  when  the  Norman  ef- 
fort began.  He  died,  full  of  an  enormous  achieve- 
ment, in  1085.     As  much  as  one  man  could,  he, 

190 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  191 

the  heir  of  Cluny,  had  re-made  Europe.  Imme- 
diately after  his  death  there  was  heard  the  march 
of  the  Crusades.  From  these  three  the  vigor  of  a 
fresh,  young,  renewed  Europe  proceeds. 

Much  might  be  added.  The  perpetual  and  suc- 
cessful chivalric  charge  against  the  Mohammedan 
in  Spain  illumined  all  that  time  and  clarified  it. 
Asia  was  pushed  back  from  the  Pyrenees,  and 
through  the  passes  of  the  Pyrenees  perpetually 
cavalcaded  the  high  adventurers  of  Christendom. 
The  Basques — a  strange  and  very  strong  small 
people — were  the  pivot  of  that  reconquest,  but  the 
valley  of  the  torrent  of  the  Aragon  was  its  channel. 
The  life  of  St.  Gregory  is  contemporaneous  with 
that  of  El  Cid  Campeador.  In  the  same  year  that 
St.  Gregory  died,  Toledo,  the  sacred  centre  of 
Spain,  was  at  last  forced  from  the  Mohammedans, 
and  their  Jewish  allies,  and  firmly  held.  All 
Southern  Europe  was  alive  with  the  sword. 

In  that  same  moment  romance  appeared;  the 
great  songs:  the  greatest  of  them  all,  the  Song  of 
Roland;  then  was  a  ferment  of  the  European 
mind,  eager  from  its  long  repose,  piercing  into  the 
undiscovered  fields.  That  watching  skepticism 
which  flanks  and  follows  the  march  of  the  Faith 
when  the  Faith  is  most  vigorous  had  also  begun 
to  speak. 

There  was  even  some  expansion  beyond  the 
boundaries  eastward,  so  that  something  of  the  un- 
fruitful Baltic  Plain  was  reclaimed.  Letters  awoke 
and  Philosophy.     Soon  the  greatest  of  all  human 


192  EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH 

exponents,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  was  to  appear. 
The  plastic  arts  leapt  up:  Color  and  Stone.  Hu- 
mor fully  returned:  general  travel:  vision.  In 
general,  the  moment  was  one  of  expectation  and 
of  advance.     It  was  spring. 

For  the  purposes  of  these  few  pages  I  must  con- 
fine the  attention  of  my  reader  to  those  three 
tangible  sources  of  the  new  Europe,  which,  as  I 
have  said,  were  the  Normans,  St.  Gregory  VII.,  and 
the  Crusades. 

Of  the  Norman  race  we  may  say  that  it  re- 
sembled in  history  those  mirx  or  new  stars  which 
flare  out  upon  the  darkness  of  the  night  sky  for 
some  few  hours  or  weeks  or  years,  and  then  are 
lost  or  merged  in  the  infinity  of  things.  He  is  in- 
deed unhistorical  who  would  pretend  William  the 
Conqueror,  the  organizer  and  maker  of  what  we 
now  call  England,  Robert  the  Wizard,  the  con- 
querors of  Sicily,  or  any  of  the  great  Norman 
names  that  light  Europe  in  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries,  to  be  even  partly  Scandinavians. 
They  were  Gauls:  short  in  stature,  lucid  in  de- 
sign, vigorous  in  stroke,  positive  in  philosophy. 
They  bore  no  outward  relation  to  the  soft  and  tall 
and  sentimental  North  from  which  some  few  of 
their  remote  ancestry  had  drawn  ancestral  names. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  anyone  who  should  pre- 
tend that  this  amazing  and  ephemeral  phenome- 
non, the  Norman,  was  merely  Gallo-Roman,  would 
commit  an  error:  an  error  far  less  gross  but  still 
misleading.     In   speech,   in   manner,  in  accoutre- 


EUROPE  A^D  THE  FAITH  193 

ment,  in  the  very  trick  of  riding  the  horse,  in  the 
cooking  of  food,  in  that  most  intimate  part  of  man, 
his  jests,  the  Norman  was  wholly  and  apparently 
a  Gaul.  In  his  body — hard,  short,  square,  broad- 
shouldered,  alert — the  Norman  was  a  Frenchman 
only.  But  no  other  part  of  Gaul  then  did  what 
Normandy  did:  nor  could  any  other  French  prov- 
ince show,  as  Normandy  showed,  immediate,  or- 
ganized and  creative  power,  during  the  few  years 
that  the  marvel  lasted. 

That  marvel  is  capable  of  explanation  and  I  will 
attempt  to  explain  it.  Those  dull,  blundering  and 
murderous  ravagings  of  the  coasts  of  Christian 
Europe  by  the  pirates  of  Scandinavia  (few  in  num- 
ber, futile  in  achievement)  which  we  call  in  Eng- 
lish history,  "The  Danish  Invasions,"  were  called 
upon  the  opposite  coast  of  the  Channel,  "The  In- 
vasions of  the  Nordmanni"  or  "the  Men  of  the 
North."  They  came  from  the  Baltic  and  from  Nor- 
way. They  were  part  of  the  universal  assault 
which  the  Dark  Ages  of  Christendom  had  to  sus- 
tain: part  of  a  ceaseless  pressure  from  without 
against  civilization;  and  they  were  but  a  part  of  it. 
They  were  few,  as  pirates  always  must  be.  It  was 
on  the  estuaries  of  a  few  continental  rivers  and  in 
the  British  Isles  that  they  counted  most  in  the  lives 
of  Europeans. 

Now  among  the  estuaries  of  the  great  rivers  was 
the  estuary  of  the  Seine.  The  Scandinavian 
pirates  forced  it  again  and  again.  At  the  end  of 
the  ninth  century  they  had  besieged  Paris,  which 


194  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

was  then  rapidly  becoming  the  political  centre  of 
Gaul. 

So  much  was  there  left  of  the  Roman  tradition  in 
that  last  stronghold  of  the  Roman  Empire  that  the 
quieting  of  invading  hordes  by  their  settlement  (by 
inter-marriage  with  and  granting  of  land  in,  a 
fixed  Roman  province)  was  a  policy  still  obvious 
to  those  who  still  called  themselves  "The  Em- 
perors" of  the  West.] 

In  the  year  911  this  antique  method,  conse- 
crated by  centuries  of  tradition,  produced  its  last 
example  and  the  barbarian  troublers  from  the  sea 
were  given  a  fixed  limit  of  land  wherein  they  might 
settle.  The  maritime  province  "Lugdunensis 
Secunda"^  was  handed  over  to  them  for  settlement, 
that  is,  they  might  not  attempt  a  partition  of  the 
land  outside  its  boundaries. 

On  the  analogy  of  all  similar  experiments  we  can 
be  fairly  certain  of  what  happened,  though  there 
is  no  contemporary  record  of  such  domestic  de- 
tails in  the  case  of  Normandy. 

The  barbarians,  few  in  number,  coming  into  a 
fertile  and  thickly  populated  Roman  province, 
only  slightly  afTected  its  blood,  but  their  leaders 
occupied  waste  land,  planted  themselves  as  heirs 
of  existing  childless  lords,  took  to  wife  the 
heiresses  of  others;  enfeoffed  groups  of  small  men; 
took  a  share  of  the  revenue;  helped  to  answer  for 

1  The  delimitation  of  this  province  dated  from  Diocletian.  It 
was  already  six  hundred  years  old,  its  later  name  of  "Normandy" 
masked  this  essential  fact  that  it  was  and  is  a  Roman  division, 
as    for   that   matter   are    probably    our    English    counties. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  195 

military  levy  and  general  government.  Their  chief 
was  responsible  to  the  crown. 

To  the  mass  of  the  population  the  new  arrange- 
ment would  make  no  change;  they  were  no  longer 
slaves,  but  they  were  still  serfs.  Secure  of  their 
small  farms,  but  still  bound  to  work  for  their  lord, 
it  mattered  little  to  them  whether  that  lord  of 
theirs  had  married  his  daughter  to  a  pirate  or  had 
made  a  pirate  his  heir  or  his  partner  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  estate.  All  the  change  the  serf 
would  notice  from  the  settlement  was  that  the 
harrying  and  the  plundering  of  occasional  bar- 
barian raids  had  ceased. 

In  the  governing  class  of  perhaps  some  ten  to 
twenty  thousand  families  the  difference  would  be 
very  noticeable  indeed.  The  pirate  newcomers, 
though  insignificant  in  number  compared  with  the 
total  population,  were  a  very  large  fraction  added 
to  so  small  a  body.  The  additional  blood,  though 
numerically  a  small  proportion,  permeated  rapidly 
throughout  the  whole  community.  Scandinavian 
names  and  habits  may  have  had  at  first  some  little 
effect  upon  the  owner-class  with  which  the  Scandi- 
navians first  mingled;  it  soon  disappeared.  But, 
as  had  been  the  case  centuries  before  in  the  earlier 
experiments  of  that  sort,  it  was  the  barbarian  chief 
and  his  hereditary  descendants  who  took  over  the 
local  government  and  "held  it,"  as  the  phrase 
went,  of  the  universal  government  of  Gaul. 

These  "North-men,"  the  new  and  striking  addi- 
tion to  the  province,  the  Gallo-Romans  called,  as 


196  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

we  have  seen  "Nordmanni."  The  Roman  prov- 
ince, within  the  limits  of  which  they  were  strictly 
settled,  the  second  Lyonnese,  came  to  be  called 
"Normannia."  For  a  century  the  slight  admixture 
of  new  blood  worked  in  the  general  Gallo-Roman 
mass  of  the  province  and,  numerically  small 
though  it  was,  influenced  its  character,  or  rather 
produced  a  new  thing;  just  as  in  certain  chemical 
combinations  the  small  admixture  of  a  new  ele- 
ment transforms  the  whole.  With  the  beginning 
of  the  eleventh  century,  as  everything  was  spring- 
ing into  new  life,  when  the  great  saint  who,  from 
the  chair  of  Peter,  was  to  restore  the  Church  was 
already  born,  when  the  advance  of  the  Pyreneans 
against  Islam  was  beginning  to  strike  its  decisive 
conquering  blows,  there  appeared,  a  sudden  phe- 
nomenon, this  new  thing — French  in  speech  and 
habit  and  disposition  of  body,  yet  just  differenti- 
ated from  the  rest  of  Frenchmen — the  Norman 
Race. 

It  possessed  these  characteristics — a  great  love 
of  exact  order,  an  alert  military  temper  and  a 
passion  for  reality  which  made  its  building  even 
of  ships  (though  it  was  not  in  the  main  seafaring) 
excellent,  and  of  churches  and  of  castles  the  most 
solid  of  its  time. 

All  the  Normans*  characteristics  (once  the  race 
was  formed),  led  them  to  advance.  They  con- 
quered England  and  organized  it;  they  conquered 
and  organized  Sicily  and  Southern  Italy;  they 
made  of  Normandy  itself  the  model  state  in  a  con- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  197 

fused  time;  they  surveyed  land;  they  developed  a 
regular  tactic  for  mailed  cavalry.  Yet  they  en- 
dured for  but  a  hundred  years,  and  after  that 
brief  coruscation  they  are  wholly  merged  again  in 
the  mass  of  European  things ! 

You  may  take  the  first  adventurous  lords  of  the 
Cotentin  in,  say  1030,  for  the  beginning  of  the 
Norman  thing;  you  may  take  the  Court  of  young 
Henry  II.  with  his  Southerners  and  his  high  cul- 
ture in,  say  1160,  most  certainly  for  the  burial  of 
it.  During  that  little  space  of  time  the  Norman 
had  not  only  reintroduced  exactitude  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  men,  he  had  also  provided  the  sword 
of  the  new  Papacy  and  he  had  furnished  the 
framework  of  the  crusading  host.  But  before  his 
adventure  was  done  the  French  language  and  the 
writ  of  Rome  ran  from  the  Grampians  to  the 
Euphrates. 

Of  the  Papacy  and  the  Crusades  I  now  speak. 

St.  Gregory  VII.,  the  second  of  the  great  re-crea- 
tive forces  of  that  time,  was  of  the  Tuscan  peas- 
antry. Etrurian  in  type,  therefore  Italian  in  speech, 
by  name  Hildebrand.  Whether  an  historian  under- 
stands his  career  or  no  is  a  very  test  of  whether 
that  historian  understands  the  nature  of  Europe. 
For  St.  Gregory  VII.  imposed  nothing  upon  Eu- 
rope. He  made  nothing  new.  What  he  did  was 
to  stiffen  the  ideal  with  reality.  He  provoked  a 
resurrection  of  the  flesh.  He  made  corporate  the 
centralized  Church  and  the  West. 

For  instance;  it  was  the  ideal,  the  doctrine,  the 


198  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

tradition,  the  major  custom  by  far,  that  the  clergy 
should  be  celibate.  He  enforced  celibacy  as  uni- 
versal discipline. 

The  awful  majesty  of  the  Papacy  had  been 
present  in  all  men's  minds  as  a  vast  political  con- 
ception for  centuries  too  long  to  recall;  St.  Gregory 
organized  that  monarchy,  and  gave  it  proper  in- 
struments of  rule. 

The  Unity  of  the  Church  had  been  the  constant 
image  without  which  Christendom  could  not  be; 
St.  Gregory  VII.  at  every  point  made  that  unity 
tangible  and  visible.  The  Protestant  historians 
who,  for  the  most  part,  see  in  the  man  a  sporadic 
phenomenon,  by  such  a  misconception  betray  the 
source  of  their  anaemia  and  prove  their  intellectual 
nourishment  to  be  unfed  from  the  fountain  of 
European  life.  St.  Gregory  VII.  was  not  an  in- 
ventor, but  a  renovator.  He  worked  not  upon,  but 
in,  his  material;  and  his  material  was  the  nature 
of  Europe:  our  nature. 

Of  the  awful  obstacles  such  workers  must  en- 
counter all  history  speaks.  They  are  at  conflict 
not  only  with  evil,  but  with  inertia;  and  with  local 
interest,  with  blurred  vision  and  with  restricted 
landscapes.  Always  they  think  themselves  de- 
feated, as  did  St.  Gregory  when  he  died.  Always 
they  prove  themselves  before  posterity  to  have 
done  much  more  than  any  other  mold  of  man. 
Napoleon  also  was  of  this  kind. 

When  St.  Gregory  was  dead  the  Europe  which 
he  left  was  the  monument  of  that  triumph  whose 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  199 

completion  he  had  doubted  and  the  fear  of  whose 
failure  had  put  upon  his  dying  hps  the  phrase: 
"I  have  loved  justice  and  hated  iniquity,  therefore 
I  die  in  exile." 

Immediately  after  his  death  came  the  stupend- 
ous Gallic  effort  of  the  Crusades. 

The  Crusades  were  the  second  of  the  main  armed 
eruptions  of  the  Gauls.  The  first,  centuries  before, 
had  been  the  Gallic  invasion  of  Italy  and  Greece 
and  the  Mediterranean  shores  in  the  old  Pagan 
time.  The  third,  centuries  later,  was  to  be  the 
wave  of  the  Revolution  and  of  Napoleon. 

The  preface  to  the  Crusades  appeared  in  those 
endless  and  already  successful  wars  of  Christen- 
dom against  Asia  upon  the  high  plateaus  of  Spain. 
These  had  taught  the  enthusiasm  and  the  method 
by  which  Asia,  for  so  long  at  high  tide  flooding  a 
beleagured  Europe,  might  be  slowly  repelled,  and 
from  these  had  proceeded  the  military  science  and 
the  aptitude  for  strain  which  made  possible  the 
advance  of  two  thousand  miles  upon  the  Holy 
Land.  The  consequences  of  this  last  and  third 
factor  in  the  re-awakening  of  Europe  were  so  many 
that  I  can  give  but  a  list  of  them  here. 

The  West,  still  primitive,  discovered  through  the 
Crusades  the  intensive  culture,  the  accumulated 
wealth,  the  fixed  civilized  traditions  of  the  Greek 
Empire  and  of  the  town  of  Constantinople.  It  dis- 
covered also,  in  a  vivid  new  experience,  the  East. 
The  mere  covering  of  so  much  land,  the  mere  see- 
ing of  so  many  sights  by  a  million  men  expanded 


200  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

and  broke  the  walls  of  the  mind  of  the  Dark  Ages. 
The  Mediterranean  came  to  he  covered  with 
Christian  ships,  and  took  its  place  again  with  fer- 
tile rapidity  as  the  great  highway  of  exchange. 

Europe  awoke.  All  architecture  is  transformed, 
and  that  quite  new  thing,  the  Gothic,  arises.  The 
conception  of  representative  assembly,  monastic  in 
origin,  fruitfully  transferred  to  civilian  soil,  ap- 
pears in  the  institutions  of  Christendom.  The  ver- 
nacular languages  appear,  and  with  them  the  be- 
ginnings of  our  literature:  the  Tuscan,  the  Castil- 
ian,  the  Langue  d'Oc,  the  Northern  French,  some- 
what later  the  English.  Even  the  primitive 
tongues  that  had  always  kept  their  vitality  from 
beyond  recorded  time,  the  Celtic  and  the  German^ 
begin  to  take  on  new  creative  powers  and  to  pro- 
duce a  new  literature.  That  fundamental  institu- 
tion of  Europe,  the  University,  arises;  first  in  Italy, 
immediately  after  in  Paris — which  last  becomes 
the  type  and  centre  of  the  scheme. 

The  central  civil  governments  begin  to  corre- 
spond to  their  natural  limits,  the  English  monarchy 
is  fixed  first,  the  French  kingdom  is  coalescing, 
the  Spanish  regions  will  soon  combine.  The 
Middle  Ages  are  born. 

'I  mean,  in  neither  of  the  groups  of  tongues  as  we  first  find 
them  recorded,  for  by  that  time  each — especially  the  German — 
was  full  of  Southern  words  borrowed  from  the  Empire;  but  the 
original  stocks  which  survived  side  by  side  with  this  new 
vocabulary.  For  instance,  our  first  knowledge  of  Teutonic  dia- 
lect is  of  the  eighth  century  (the  so-called  Early  Gothic  is  a 
fraud)  but  even  then  quite  half  the  words  or  more  are  truly 
German,  apparently  unaffected  by  the  Imperial  laws  and   speech. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  201 

The  flower  of  that  capital  experiment  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  race  was  the  thirteenth  century.  Ed- 
ward I.  of  England,  St.  Louis  of  France,  Pope  Inno- 
cent III.,  were  the  types  of  its  governing  manhood. 
Everywhere  Europe  was  renewed;  there  were  new 
white  walls  around  the  cities,  new  white  Gothic 
churches  in  the  towns,  new  castles  on  the  hills, 
law  codified,  the  classics  rediscovered,  the  ques- 
tions of  philosophy  sprung  to  activity  and  produc- 
ing in  their  first  vigor,  as  it  were,  the  summit  of 
expository  power  in  St.  Thomas,  surely  the  strong- 
est, the  most  virile,  intellect  which  our  European 
blood  has  given  to  the  world. 

Two  notes  mark  the  time  for  anyone  who  is 
acquainted  with  its  building,  its  letters,  and  its 
wars :  a  note  of  youth,  and  a  note  of  content.  Eu- 
rope was  imagined  to  be  at  last  achieved,  and  that 
ineradicable  dream  of  a  permanent  and  satisfac- 
tory society  seemed  to  have  taken  on  flesh 
and  to  have  come  to  live  forever  among  Chris- 
tian men. 

No  such  permanence  and  no  such  good  is  per- 
mitted to  humanity;  and  the  great  experiment,  as 
I  have  called  it,  was  destined  to  fail. 

While  it  flourished,  all  that  is  specially  charac- 
teristic of  our  European  descent  and  nature  stood 
visibly  present  in  the  daily  life,  and  in  the  large, 
as  in  the  small,  inslilulions,  of  Europe. 

Our  property  in  land  and  instruments  was  well 
divided  among  many  or  all ;  we  produced  the  peas- 
ant; we  maintained  the  independent  craftsman; 


202  EUROPE  A  AD  THE  FAITH 

we  founded  cooperative  industry.  In  arms  that 
military  type  arose  which  lives  upon  the  virtues 
proper  to  arms  and  detests  the  vices  arms  may 
breed.  Above  all,  an  intense  and  living  appetite 
for  truth,  a  perception  of  reality,  invigorated  these 
generations.  They  saw  what  was  before  them, 
they  called  things  by  their  n^mes.  Never  was  po- 
litical or  social  formula  less  divorced  from  fact, 
never  was  the  mass  of  our  civilization  better 
welded — and  in  spite  of  all  this  the  thing  did  not 
endure. 

By  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  de- 
caying of  the  flower  was  tragically  apparent.  New 
elements  of  cruelty  tolerated,  of  mere  intrigue  suc- 
cessful, of  emptiness  in  philosophical  phrase  and 
of  sophistry  in  philosophical  argument,  marked 
the  turn  of  the  tide.  Not  an  institution  of  the 
thirteenth  but  the  fourteenth  debased  it;  the  Pap- 
acy professional  and  a  prisoner,  the  parliaments 
tending  to  oligarchy,  the  popular  ideals  dimmed 
in  the  minds  of  the  rulers,  the  new  and  vigorous 
and  democratic  monastic  orders  already  touched 
with  mere  wealth  and  beginning  also  to  change — 
but  these  last  can  always^  and  do  always,  restore 
themselves. 

Upon  all  this  came  the  enormous  incident  of  the 
Black  Death.  Here  half  the  people,  there  a  third, 
there  again  a  quarter,  died;  from  that  additional 
blow  the  great  experiment  of  the  Middle  Ages 
could  not  recover. 

Men  clung  to  their  ideal  for  yet  another  hundred 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  203 

and  fifty  years.  The  vital  forces  it  had  developed 
still  carried  Europe  from  one  material  perfection 
to  another;  the  art  of  government,  the  suggestion 
of  letters,  the  technique  of  sculpture  and  of  paint- 
ing (here  raised  by  a  better  vision,  there  degraded 
by  a  worse  one),  everywhere  developed  and  grew 
manifold.  But  the  supreme  achievement  of  the 
thirteenth  century  was  seen  in  the  later  fourteenth 
to  be  ephemeral,  and  in  the  fifteenth  it  was  appa- 
rent that  the  attempt  to  found  a  simple  and  satis- 
fied Europe  had  failed. 

The  full  causes  of  that  failure  cannot  be  ana- 
lyzed. One  may  say  that  science  and  history  were 
too  slight;  that  the  material  side  of  life  was  in- 
sufficient; that  the  full  knowledge  of  the  past 
which  is  necessary  to  permanence  was  lacking — - 
or  one  may  say  that  the  ideal  was  too  high  for 
men.  I,  for  my  part,  incline  to  believe  that  wills 
other  than  those  of  mortals  were  in  combat  for 
the  soul  of  Europe,  as  they  are  in  combat  daily  for 
the  souls  of  individual  men,  and  that  in  this  spiri- 
tual battle,  fought  over  our  heads  perpetually, 
some  accident  of  the  struggle  turned  it  against  us 
for  a  time.  If  that  suggestion  be  fantastic 
(which  no  doubt  it  is),  at  any  rate  none  other 
is  complete. 

With  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  there  was 
to  come  a  supreme  test  and  temptation.  The  fall 
of  Constantinople  and  the  release  of  Greek :  the  re- 
discovery of  the  Classic  past:  the  Press:  the  new 
great  voyages — India  to  the  East,  America  to  the 


204  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

West — had  (in  the  one  lifetime  of  a  man* 
between  1453  and  1515)  suddenly  brought 
Europe  into  a  new,  a  magic,  and  a  dangerous 
land. 

To  the  provinces  of  Europe,  shaken  by  an  in- 
tellectual tempest  of  physical  discovery,  disturbed 
by  an  abrupt  and  undigested  enlargement  in  the 
material  world,  in  physical  science,  and  in  the 
know^ledge  of  antiquity,  was  to  be  offered  a  fruit 
of  which  each  might  taste  if  it  would,  but  the  taste 
of  which  would  lead,  if  it  were  acquired,  to  evils 
no  citizen  of  Europe  then  dreamt  of;  to  things 
which  even  the  criminal  intrigues  and  the  cruel 
tyrants  of  the  fifteenth  century  would  have  shud- 
dered to  contemplate,  and  to  a  disaster  which  very 
nearly  overset  our  ship  of  history  and  very  nearly 
lost  us  forever  its  cargo  of  letters,  of  philosophy, 
of  the  arts,  and  of  all  our  other  powers. 

That  disaster  is  commonly  called  "The  Refor- 
mation." I  do  not  pretend  to  analyze  its  material 
causes,  for  I  doubt  if  any  of  its  causes  were  wholly 
material.  I  rather  take  the  shape  of  the  event  and 
show  how  the  ancient  and  civilized  boundaries  of 
Europe  stood  firm,  though  shaken,  under  the  temp- 
est; how  that  tempest  might  have  ravaged  no  more 
than  those  outlying  parts  newly  incorporated — 
never    sufficiently    penetrated    perhaps    with    the 

•The  lifetime  of  one  very  great  and  famous  man  did  '"over  it. 
Ferdinand,  King  of  Aragon,  tlie  migiity  Spaniard,  the  lather  of 
the  noblest  of  English  queens,  was  born  the  year  before  Con- 
stantinople fell.  He  died  the  year  before  Luther  found  himself 
swept   to   the   head   of  a   chaotic   wave. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  205 

Faith  and  the  proper  habits  of  ordered  men — the 
outer  Germanics  and  Scandinavia. 

The  disaster  would  have  been  upon  a  scale  not 
too  considerable,  and  Europe  might  quickly  have 
righted  hirself  after  the  gust  should  be  passed, 
had  not  one  exception  of  capital  amount  marked 
the  intensest  crisis  of  the  storm.  That  exception 
to  the  resistance  offered  by  the  rest  of  ancient  Eu- 
rope was  the  defection  of  Britain. 

Conversely  with  this  loss  of  an  ancient  province 
of  the  Empire,  one  nation,  and  one  alone,  of  those 
which  the  Roman  Empire  had  not  bred,  stood  the 
strain  and  preserved  the  continuity  of  Christian 
tradition:  that  nation  was  Ireland. 


VIII 
What  Was  the  Reformation? 

This  is  perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  historical 
questions,  after  the  original  question:  "What 
was  the  Church  in  the  Empire  of  Rome?"  A  true 
answer  to  this  original  question  gives  the  nature  of 
that  capital  revolution  by  which  Europe  came  to 
unity  and  to  maturity  and  attained  to  a  full  con- 
sciousness of  itself.  An  answer  to  the  other  ques- 
tion: "What  was  the  Reformation?"  begins  to 
explain  our  modern  ill-ease. 

A  true  answer  to  the  question:  "What  was  the 
Reformation?"  is  of  such  vast  importance,  because 
it  is  only  when  we  grasp  what  the  Reformation 
was  that  we  understand  its  consequences.  Then 
only  do  we  know  how  the  united  body  of  European 
civilization  has  been  cut  asunder  and  by  what  a 
wound.  The  abomination  of  industrialism;  the 
loss  of  land  and  capital  by  the  people  in  great  dis- 
tricts of  Europe;  the  failure  of  modern  discovery 
to  serve  the  end  of  man;  the  series  of  larger  and 
still  larger  wars  following  in  a  rapidly  rising  scale 
of  severity  and  destruction — till  the  dead  are  now 
counted  in  tens  of  millions;  the  increasing  chaos 
and  misfortune  of  society — all  these  attach  one  to 

206 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  207 

the  other,  each  falls  into  its  place,  and  a  hundred 
smaller  phenomena  as  well,  when  we  appreciate, 
as  todaj'  we  can,  the  nature  and  the  magnitude  of 
that  fundamental  catastrophe. 

It  is  possible  that  the  perilous  business  is  now 
drawing  to  its  end,  and  that  (though  those  now  liv- 
ing will  not  live  to  see  it)  Christendom  may  enter 
into  a  convalescence:  may  at  last  forget  the  fever 
and  be  restored.  With  that  I  am  not  here  con- 
cerned. It  is  my  business  only  to  explain  that 
storm  which  struck  Europe  four  hundred  years 
ago  and  within  a  century  brought  Christendom  to 
shipwreck. 

The  true  causes  are  hidden — for  they  were 
spiritual. 

\Jn  proportion  as  an  historical  matter  is  of  im- 
port to  human  kind,  in  that  proportion  does  it 
spring  not  from  apparent — let  alone  material — 
causes,  but  from  some  hidden  revolution  in  the 
human  spirit.  To  pretend  an  examination  of  the 
secret  springs  whence  the  human  mind  is  fed  is 
futile.  The  greater  the  affair,  the  more  directly 
does  it  proceed  from  unseen  sources  which  the 
theologian  may  catalogue,  the  poet  see  in  vision, 
the  philosopher  explain,  but  with  which  positive 
external  history  cannot  deal,  and  which  the  mere 
historian  cannot  handle.  It  is  the  function  of  his- 
tory to  present  the  outward  thing,  as  a  witness 
might  have  seen  it,  and  to  show  the  reader  as 
much  as  a  spectator  could  have  seen — illuminated 
indeed  by  a  knowledge  of  the  past — and  a  judg- 


208  EUROPE  AiYD  THE  FAITH 

ment  drawn  from  known  succeeding  events.  The 
historian  answers  the  question,  ''What  was?"  this 
or  that.  To  the  question,  "Why  was  it?"  if  it  be  in 
the  spiritual  order  (as  are  all  major  things),  the 
reader  must  attempt  his  own  reply  based  upon 
other  aptitudes  than  those  of  historic  science. 

It  is  the  neglect  of  this  canon  which  makes 
barren  so  much  work  upon  the  past.  Read  Gib- 
bon's attempt  to  account  for  "why"  the  Catholic 
Church  arose  in  the  Roman  Empire,  and  mark 
his  empty  failure.^ 

Mark  also  how  all  examination  of  the  causes  of 
the  French  Revolution  are  colored  by  something 
small  and  degraded,  quite  out  of  proportion  to  that 
stupendous  crusade  which  transformed  the  mod- 
ern world.  The  truth  is,  that  the  historian  can 
only  detail  those  causes,  largely  material,  all  evi- 
dent and  positive,  which  lie  within  his  province, 
and  such  causes  are  quite  insufficient  to  explain 
the  full  result.  Were  I  here  writing  "Why"  the 
Reformation  came,  my  reply  would  not  be  historic, 
but  mystic.  I  should  say  that  it  came  "from  out- 
side mankind."  Rut  that  would  be  to  affirm  with- 
out the  hope  of  proof,  and  only  in  the  confidence 
that  all  attempts  at  positive  proof  were  con- 
temptible. Luckily  I  am  not  concerned  in  so  pro- 
fit is  true  that  Gibbon  was  ill  equipped  for  his  task  because 
he  lacked  historical  imagination.  He  could  not  grasp  the  spirit 
of  a  past  age.  He  could  not  enter  into  any  mood  save  that  of 
his  master,  Voltaire.  But  it  is  not  only  true  of  Gibbon  that  he 
fails  to  explain  the  great  revolution  of  A.  D.  29-304.  No  one 
attempting  that  explanation  has  succeeded,  ft  was  not  of  this 
world. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  209 

found  an  issue,  but  only  in  the  presentation  of  the 
thing  as  it  was.     Upon  this  I  now  set  out. 

With  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  two  phe- 
nomena appeared  side  by  side  in  the  society  of 
Europe.  The  first  was  an  ageing  and  a  grow- 
ing fatigue  of  the  simple  mediaeval  scheme; 
the  second  was  a  very  rapid  accretion  of 
technical  power. 

As  to  the  first  I  have  suggested  (it  is  no  more 
than  a  suggestion),  that  the  mediaeval  scheme  of 
society,  though  much  the  best  fitted  to  our  race  and 
much  the  best  expression  which  it  has  yet  found, 
though  especially  productive  of  happiness  (which 
here  and  hereafter  is  the  end  of  man),  was  not 
properly  provided  with  instruments  of  survival. 

Its  science  was  too  imperfect,  its  institutions  too 
local,  though  its  philosophy  was  the  widest  ever 
framed  and  the  most  satisfying  to  the  human 
intelligence. 

Whatever  be  the  reason,  that  society  did  rapidly 
grow  old.  Its  every  institution  grew  formal  or  de- 
based. The  Guilds  from  true  cooperative  partner- 
ships for  the  proper  distribution  of  the  means  of 
production,  and  for  the  prevention  of  a  proletariat 
with  its  vile  cancer  of  capitalism,  tended  to  become 
privileged  bodies.  Even  the  heart  of  Christian 
Europe,  the  village,  showed  faint  signs  that  it 
might  become  an  oligarchy  of  privileged  farmers 
with  some  land  and  less  men  at  their  orders.  The 
Monastic  orders  were  tainted  in  patches  up  and 
down  Europe,  with  worldliness,  with  an  abandon- 


210  EUROPE  AXD   THE  FAITH 

ment  of  their  strict  rule,  and  occasionally  with 
vice.  Civil  government  grew  befogged  with  tradi- 
tion and  with  complex  rules.  All  manner  of  the- 
atrical and  false  trappings  began  to  deform  soci- 
ety, notably  the  exaggeration  of  heraldry  and  a 
riot  of  symbolism  of  which  very  soon  no  one  could 
make  head  or  tail. 

(The  temporal  and  visible  organization  of  the 
Church  did  not  escape  in  such  a  welter.  The 
lethargy,  avarice,  and  routine  from  which  that  or- 
ganization suffered,  has  been  both  grossly  exag- 
gerated and  set  out  of  perspective.  A  wild  pic- 
ture of  it  has  been  drawn  by  its  enemies.  But  in 
a  degree  the  temporal  organization  of  the  Church 
had  decayed  at  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It 
was  partly  too  much  a  taking  of  things  for  granted, 
a  conviction  that  nothing  could  really  upset  the 
unity  of  Europe;  partly  the  huge  concentration  of 
wealth  in  clerical  hands,  which  proceeded  from  the 
new  economic  activity  all  over  Europe,  coupled 
with  the  absolute  power  of  the  clergy  in  certain 
centres  and  the  universal  economic  function  of 
Rome;  partly  a  popular  loss  of  faith.  All  these 
between  them  helped  to  do  the  business.  At  any 
rate  the  evil  was  there. 

All  institutions  (says  Machiavelli)  must  return 
to  their  origins,  or  they  fail.  There  appeared 
throughout  Europe  in  the  last  century  of  united 
Europe,  breaking  out  here  and  there,  sporadic  at- 
tempts to  revivify  the  common  life,  especially  upon 
its  spiritual  side,  by  a  return  to  the  primitive  com- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  211 

munal  enthusiasms  in  which  religion  necessarily 
has  its  historical  origins. 

This  was  in  no  way  remarkable.  Neither  was  it 
remarkable  that  each  such  sporadic  and  spontan- 
eous outburst  should  have  its  own  taint  or  vice  or 
false  color. 

What  was  remarkable  and  what  made  the  period 
unique  in  the  whole  history  of  Christendom  (save 
for  the  Arian  flood)  was  the  incapacity  of  the  ex- 
ternal organization  of  the  Church  at  the  moment  to 
capture  the  spiritual  discontent,  and  to  satisfy  the 
spiritual  hunger  of  which  these  errors  were  the 
manifestation. 

In  a  slower  time  the  external  organization  of  the 
Church  would  have  absorbed  and  regulated  the 
new  things,  good  and  evil.  It  would  have  ren- 
dered the  heresies  ridiculous  in  turn,  it  would 
have  canalized  the  exaltations,  it  would  have  hu- 
manized the  discoveries.  But  things  were  moving 
at  a  rate  more  and  more  rapid,  the  whole  society 
of  Western  Christendom  raced  from  experience 
to  experience.  It  was  flooded  with  the  newly 
found  manuscripts  of  antiquity,  with  the  new  dis- 
coveries of  unknown  continents,  with  new  com- 
merce, printing,  and,  an  effect  perhaps  rather  than 
a  cause,  the  complete  rebirth  of  painting,  archi- 
tecture, sculpture  and  all  the  artistic  expression  of 
Europe. 

In  point  of  fact  this  doubt  and  seething  and  at- 
tempted return  to  early  religious  enthusiasm  were 
not  digested  and  were  not  captured.     The  spiritual 


212  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

hunger  of  the  time  was  not  fed.  Its  extravagance 
was  not  exposed  to  the  solvent  of  laughter  or  to 
the  flame  of  a  suflBcient  indignation:  they  were 
therefore  neither  withered  nor  eradicated.  For 
the  spirit  had  grown  old.  The  great  movement  of 
the  spirit  in  Europe  was  repressed  haphazard  and, 
quite  as  much  haphazard,  encouraged,  but  there 
seemed  no  one  corporate  force  present  throughout 
Christendom  which  would  persuade,  encourage 
and  command:  even  the  Papacy,  the  core  of  our 
unity,  was  shaken  by  long  division  and  intrigue. 

Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  in  the  particu- 
lar form  of  special  heresies  the  business  was  local, 
peculiar  and  contemptible.  Wycliflfe,  for  instance, 
was  no  more  the  morning  star  of  the  Reformation 
than  Catherine  of  Braganza's  Tangier  Dowry,  let 
us  say,  was  the  morning  star  of  the  modern  Eng- 
lish Empire.  Wycliffe  was  but  one  of  a  great  num- 
ber of  men  who  were  theorizing  up  and  down  Eu- 
rope upon  the  nature  of  society  and  morals,  each 
with  his  special  metaphysic  of  the  Sacrament; 
each  with  his  "system."  Such  men  have  always 
abounded;  they  abound  today.  Some  of  Wycliffe's 
extravagances  resemble  what  many  Protestants 
happen,  later,  to  have  held;  others  (such  as  his 
theory  that  you  could  not  own  land  unless  you 
were  in  a  state  of  grace)  were  of  the  opposite  ex- 
treme to  Protestantism.  And  so  it  is  with  the 
whole  lot:  and  there  were  hundreds  of  them. 
There  was  no  common  theory,  no  common  feeling 
in  the  various  reactions  against  a  corrupted  ec- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  213 

clesiastical  authority  which  marked  the  end  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  There  was  nothing  the  least  like 
what  we  call  Protestantism  today.  Indeed  that 
spirit  and  mental  color  does  not  appear  until  a 
couple  of  generations  after  the  opening  of  the 
Reformation  itself. 

What  there  was,  was  a  widespread  discontent 
and  exasperated  friction  against  the  existing,  rigid, 
and  yet  deeply  decayed,  temporal  organization  of 
religious  affairs;  and  in  their  uneasy  fretting 
against  that  unworthy  rule,  the  various  centres  of 
irritation  put  up  now  one  startling  theory  which 
they  knew  would  annoy  the  official  Church,  now 
another,  perhaps  the  exact  opposite  of  the  last. 
Now  they  denied  something  as  old  as  Europe — 
such  as  the  right  to  property:  now  a  new  piece  of 
usage  or  discipline  such  as  Communion  in  one 
kind :  now  a  partial  regional  rule,  such  as  celibacy. 
Some  went  stark  mad.  Others,  at  the  contrary  ex- 
treme, did  no  more  than  expose  false  relics. 

A  general  social  ill-ease  was  the  parent  of  all 
these  sporadic  heresies.  Many  had  elaborate  sys- 
tems, but  none  of  these  systems  was  a  true  creed, 
that  is,  a  motive.  No  one  of  the  outbursts  had  any 
philosophic  driving  power  behind  it;  all  and  each 
were  no  more  than  violent  and  blind  reactions 
against  a  clerical  authority  which  gave  scandal  and 
set  up  an  intolerable  strain. 

Shall  I  give  an  example?  One  of  the  most  pop- 
ular forms  which  the  protest  took,  was  what  I  have 
just  mentioned,  a  demand  for  Communion  in  both 


214  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

kinds  and  for  the  restoration  of  what  was  in  many 
places  ancient  custom,  the  drinking  from  the  cup 
after  the  priest. 

Could  anything  better  prove  the  truth  that  mere 
irritation  against  the  external  organization  of  the 
Church  was  the  power  at  work?  Could  any  point 
have  less  to  do  with  the  fundamentals  of  the  Faith? 
Of  course,  as  an  implication  of  false  doctrine — as 
that  the  Priesthood  is  not  an  Order,  or  that  the 
Presence  of  Our  Lord  is  not  in  both  species — it  had 
its  importance.  But  in  itself  how  trivial  a  "kick." 
Why  should  anyone  desire  the  cup  save  to  mark 
dissension  from  established  custom! 

Here  is  another  example.  Prominent  among 
the  later  expressions  of  discontent  you  have  the 
Adamites,^  who  among  other  tenets  rejected  clothes 
upon  the  more  solemn  occasions  of  their  ritual  and 
went  naked:  raving  maniacs.  The  whole  business 
was  a  rough  and  tumble  of  protest  against  the 
breakdown  of  a  social  system  whose  breakdown 
seemed  the  more  terrible  because  it  had  been  such 
a  haven!  Because  it  was  in  essence  founded  upon 
the   most   intimate   appetites   of   European    men. 

'  The  rise  of  these  oddities  is  nearly  contemporary  with 
Wycliffe  and  is,  lilie  his  career,  about  one  hundred  years  pre- 
vious to  the  Reformation  proper:  the  sects  are  of  various 
longevity.  Some,  lilte  the  Calvinists,  have,  while  dwindling 
rapidly  in  numbers,  kept  their  full  doctrines  for  now  four 
hundred  years,  others  like  the  Johanna  Southcottites  hardly  last 
a  lifetime:  others  like  the  Modernists  a  decade  or  less:  others 
like  the  Mormons  near  a  century,  their  close  is  not  yet.  I  myself 
met  a  man  in  Colorado  in  1891  whose  friends  thought  him  the 
Messiah.  Unlike  the  Wycliflites  certain  members  of  the  Adamites 
until  lately  survived  in  Austria. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  215 

The  heretics  were  angry  because  they  had  lost 
their  home. 

This  very  general  picture  omits  Huss  and  the 
national  movement  for  which  he  stood.  It  omits 
the  Papal  Schism;  the  Council  of  Constance;  all 
the  great  facts  of  the  fifteenth  century  on  its  re- 
ligious side.  I  am  concerned  only  with  the  presen- 
tation of  the  general  character  of  the  time,  and 
that  character  was  what  I  have  described:  an  ir- 
repressible, largely  justified,  discontent  breaking 
out :  a  sort  of  chronic  rash  upon  the  skin  of  Chris- 
tian Europe,  which  rash  the  body  of  Christendom 
could  neither  absorb  nor  cure. 

Now  at  this  point — and  before  we  leave  the  fif- 
teenth century — there  is  another  historical  feature 
which  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  seize  if  we 
are  to  understand  what  followed;  for  it  was  a  fea- 
ture common  to  all  European  thought  until  a  time 
long  after  the  final  establishment  of  permanent 
cleavage  in  Europe.  It  is  a  feature  which  nearly 
all  historians  neglect  and  yet  one  manifest  upon 
the  reading  of  any  contemporary  expression. 
That  feature  is  this:  No  one  in  the  Reformation 
dreamt  a  divided  Christendom  to  be  possible. 

This  flood  of  heretical  movement  was  oecumen- 
ical; it  was  not  peculiar  to  one  race  or  climate  or 
culture  or  nation.  The  numberless  uneasy  inno- 
vators thought,  even  the  wildest  of  them,  in  terms 
of  Europe  as  a  whole.  They  desired  to  affect  the 
universal  Church  and  change  it  en  bloc.  They 
had  no  local  ambition.     They  stood  for  no  particu- 


216  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

lar  blood  or  temperament;  they  sprang  up  every- 
where, bred  by  the  universal  ill-ease  of  a  society 
still  universal.  You  were  as  likely  to  get  an  en- 
thusiast declaring  himself  to  be  the  Messiah  in 
Seville  as  an  enthusiast  denying  the  Real  Presence 
in  Aberdeen. 

That  fatal  habit  of  reading  into  the  past  what 
we  know  of  its  future  has  in  this  matter  most  de- 
plorably marred  history,  and  men,  whether  Prot- 
estant or  Catholic,  who  are  now  accustomed  to 
Protestantism,  read  Protestantism  and  the  absurd 
idea  of  a  local  religion — a  religion  true  in  one  place 
and  untrue  in  another — into  a  time  where  the 
least  instructed  clown  would  have  laughed  in  your 
face  at  such  nonsense. 

The  whole  thing,  the  evil  coupled  with  a  quite 
ineffectual  resistance  to  the  evil,  was  a  thing  com- 
mon to  all  Europe. 

It  is  the  nature  of  any  organic  movement  to 
progress  or  to  recede.  But  this  movement  was 
destined  to  advance  with  devastating  rapidity,  and 
that  on  account  of  what  I  have  called  the  second 
factor  in  the  Reformation:  the  very  rapid  accre- 
tion in  technical  power  which  marked  the  close 
of  the  Middle  Ages. 

Printing;  navigation;  all  mensuration;  the  han- 
dling of  metals  and  every  material — all  these  took 
a  sudden  leap  forward  with  the  Renaissance,  the 
revival  of  arts:  that  vast  stirring  of  the  later 
Middle  Ages  which  promised  to  give  us  a  restored 
antiquity  Christianized:  which  was  burnt  in  the 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  217 

flame  of  a  vile  fanaticism,  and  has  left  us  nothing 
but  ashes  and  incommiscible  salvage. 
{^Physical  knowledge,  the  expansion  of  physical 
experience  and  technical  skill,  were  moving  in  the 
century  before  the  Reformation  at  such  a  rate  that 
a  contemporary  spiritual  phenomenon,  if  it  ad- 
vanced at  all,  was  bound  to  advance  very  rapidly, 
and  this  spiritual  eruption  in  Europe  came  to  a 
head  just  at  the  moment  when  the  contemporary 
expansion  of  travel,  of  economic  activity  and  of  the 
revival  of  learning,  had  also  emerged  in  their  full 
force. 

j  It  was  in  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century  that  the  coalescing  of  the  various  forces  of 
spiritual  discontent  and  revolt  began  to  be  appa- 
rent. Before  1530  the  general  storm  was  to  burst 
and  the  Reformation  proper  to  be  started  on  its 
way. 

But  as  a  preliminary  to  that  matter,  the  reader 
should  first  understand  how  another  and  quite  dis- 
connected social  development  had  prepared  the 
way  for  the  triumph  of  the  reformers.  This  de- 
velopment was  the  advent  of  Absolute  Government 
in  civil  affairs. 

Here  and  there  in  the  long  history  of  Europe 
there  crops  up  an  isolated  accident,  very  striking, 
very  effective,  of  short  duration.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  Norman  race  was  one  of  these. 
Tyranny  in  civil  government  (which  accompanied 
the  Reformation)  was  another. 

A  claim  to  absolute  monarchy  is  one  of  the  com- 


218  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

monest  and  most  enduring  of  historical  things. 
Countless  centuries  of  the  old  Empires  of  the  East 
were  passed  under  such  a  claim,  the  Roman  Em- 
pire was  based  upon  it;  the  old  Russian  State  was 
made  by  it,  French  society  luxuriated  in  it  for  one 
magnificent  century,  from  the  accession  of  Louis 
XIV.  till  Fontenoy.  It  is  the  easiest  and  (when  it 
works)  the  most  prompt  of  all  instruments. 
I  But  the  sense  of  an  absolute  civil  government  at 
the  moment  of  the  Reformation  was  something 
very  different.  It  was  a  demand,  an  appetite,  pro- 
ceeding from  the  whole  community,  a  worship  of 
civil  authority.  It  was  deification  of  the  State  and 
of  law;  it  was  the  adoration  of  the  Executive. 

"This  governs  me;  therefore  I  will  worship  it 
and  do  all  it  tells  me."  Such  is  the  formula  for 
the  strange  passion  which  has  now  and  then 
seized  great  bodies  of  human  beings  intoxicated 
by  splendor  and  by  the  vivifying  effects  of  com- 
mand. Like  all  manias  (for  it  is  a  mania)  this  ex- 
aggerated passion  is  hardly  'comprehended  once  it 
is  past.  Like  all  manias,  while  it  is  present  it 
overrides  every  other  emotion. 

Europe,  in  the  time  of  which  I  speak,  suffered 
such  a  mania.  The  free  cities  manifested  that  dis- 
ease quite  as  much  as  the  great  monarchical 
states.  In  Rome  itself  the  temporal  power  of  the 
Papal  sovereign  was  then  magnificent  beyond  all 
past  parallel.  In  Geneva  Calvin  was  a  god.  In 
Spain  Charles  and  Philip  governed  two  worlds 
without  question.     In  England  the  Tudor  dynasty 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  219 

was  worshipped  blindly.  Men  might  and  did  rebel 
against  a  particular  government,  but  it  was  only 
to  set  up  something  equally  absolute  in  its  place. 
Not  the  form  but  the  fact  of  government  was 
adored. 

I  will  not  waste  the  reader's  time  in  any  discus- 
sion upon  the  causes  of  that  astonishing  political 
fever.  It  must  suffice  to  say  that  for  a  moment  it 
hypnotized  the  whole  world.  It  would  have  been 
incomprehensible  to  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was  in- 
comprehensible to  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
wholly  occupied  the  sixteenth.  If  we  understand 
it,  we  largely  understand  what  made  the  success  of 
the  Reformation  possible. 

Well,  then,  the  increasing  discontent  of  the 
masses  against  the  decaying  forms  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  the  increasing  irritation  against  the  tem- 
poral government  and  the  organization  of  the 
Church,  came  to  a  head  just  at  that  moment  when 
civil  government  was  worshipped  as  an  awful  and 
almost  divine  thing. 

Into  such  an  atmosphere  was  launched  the  last 
and  the  strongest  of  the  overt  protests  against  the 
old  social  scheme,  and  in  particular  against  the  ex- 
isting power  of  the  Papacy,  especially  upon  its 
economic  side. 

The  name  most  prominently  associated  with  the 
crisis  is  that  of  Martin  Luther,  an  Augustinian 
monk,  German  by  birth  and  speech,  and  one  of 
those  exuberant  sensual,  rather  inconsequential, 
characters  which  so  easily  attract  hearty  friend- 


220  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

ships,  and  which  can  never  pretend  to  organization 
or  command,  though  certainly  to  creative  power. 
What  he  precisely  meant  or  would  do,  no  man 
could  tell,  least  of  all  himself.  He  was  "out"  for 
protest  and  he  floated  on  the  crest  of  the  general 
wave  of  change.  That  he  ever  intended,  nay,  that 
he  could  ever  have  imagined,  a  disruption  of  the 
European  Unity  is  impossible. 

Luther  (a  voice,  no  leader)  was  but  one  of  many: 
had  he  never  lived,  the  great  bursting  wave  would 
have  crashed  onward  much  the  same.  One 
scholar  after  another  (and  these  of  every  blood 
and  from  every  part  of  Europe)  joined  in  the  up- 
heaval. The  opposition  of  the  old  monastic  train- 
ing to  the  newly  revived  classics,  of  the  ascetic  to 
the  new  pride  of  life,  of  the  logician  to  the  mystic, 
all  these  in  a  confused  whirl  swept  men  of  every 
type  into  the  disruption.  One  thing  only  united 
them.  They  were  all  inflamed  with  a  vital  neces- 
sity for  change.  Great  names  which  in  the  ulti- 
mate challenge  refused  to  destroy  and  helped  to 
preserve — the  greatest  is  that  of  Erasmus;  great 
names  which  even  appear  in  the  roll  of  that  of  the 
Catholic  martyrs — the  blessed  Thomas  More  is  the 
greatest  of  these — must  here  be  counted  with  the 
names  of  men  like  the  narrow  Calvin  on  the  one 
hand,  the  large  Rabelais  upon  the  other.  Not  one 
ardent  mind  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury but  was  swept  into  the  stream. 

Now  all  this  would  and  must  have  been  quieted 
in  the  process  of  time,  the  mass  of  Christendom 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  221 

would  have  settled  back  into  unity,  the  populace 
would  have  felt  instinctively  the  risk  they  ran  of 
spoliation  by  the  rich  and  powerful,  if  the  popular 
institutions  of  Christendom  broke  down:  the 
masses  would  have  all  swung  round  to  solidifying 
society  after  an  upheaval  (it  is  their  function) : 
we  should  have  attained  repose  and  Europe,  united 
again,  would  have  gone  forward  as  she  did  after 
the  rocking  of  four  hundred  years  before — but  for 
that  other  factor  of  which  I  have  spoken,  the  pas- 
sion which  this  eager  creative  moment  felt  for  the 
absolute  in  civil  government — that  craving  for  the 
something  godlike  which  makes  men  worship  a 
flag,  a  throne  or  a  national  hymn. 

This  it  was  which  caught  up  and,  in  the  persons 
of  particular  men,  used  the  highest  of  the  tide. 
Certain  princes  in  the  Germanics  (who  had,  of  all 
the  groups  of  Europe,  least  grasped  the  meaning  of 
authority)  befriended  here  one  heresiarch  and 
there  another.  The  very  fact  that  the  Pope  of 
Rome  stood  for  one  of  these  absolute  governments 
put  other  absolute  governments  against  him.  The 
wind  of  the  business  rose;  it  became  a  quarrel  of 
sovereigns.  And  the  sovereigns  decided,  and 
powerful  usurping  nobles  or  leaders  decided,  the 
future  of  the  herd. 

Two  further  characters  appeared  side  by  side 
in  the  earthquake  that  was  breaking  up  Europe. 

The  first  was  this:  the  tendency  to  fall  away 
from  European  unity  seemed  more  and  more 
marked  in  those  outer  places  which  lay  beyond 


222  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  original  limits  of  the  old  Roman  Empire,  and 
notably  in  the  Northern  Netherlands  and  in  North- 
ern Germany — where  men  easily  submitted  to  the 
control  of  wealthy  merchants  and  of  hereditary 
landlords. 

The  second  was  this :  a  profound  distrust  of  the 
new  movement,  a  reaction  against  it,  a  feeling  that 
moral  anarchy  was  too  profitable  to  the  rich  and 
the  cupidinous,  began  at  first  in  a  dull,  later  in  an 
angry  way,  to  stir  the  masses  of  the  populace 
throughout  all  Christendom. 

The  stronger  the  old  Latin  sense  of  human 
equality  was,  the  more  the  populace  felt  this,  the 
more  they  instinctively  conceived  of  the  Reforma- 
tion as  something  that  would  rob  them  of  some 
ill-understood  but  profound  spiritual  guarantee 
against  slavery,  exploitation  and  oppression. 

There  began  a  sort  of  popular  grumbling  against 
the  Reformers,  who  were  now  already  schismatic: 
their  rich  patrons  fell  under  the  same  suspicion. 
By  the  time  the  movement  had  reached  a  head 
and  by  the  time  the  central  power  of  the  Church 
had  been  openly  defied  by  the  German  princes,  this 
protest  took,  as  in  France  and  England  and  the 
valley  of  the  Rhone  (the  ancient  seats  of  culture), 
a  noise  like  the  undertone  of  the  sea  before  bad 
weather.  In  the  outer  Germanics  it  was  not  a  de- 
fence of  Christendom  at  all,  but  a  brutish  cry  for 
more  food.     But  everywhere  the  populace  stirred. 

A  general  observer,  cognizant  of  what  was  to 
come,  would  have  been  certain  at  that  moment 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  223 

that  the  populace  would  rise.  When  it  rose  in- 
telligently the  movement  against  the  Church  and 
civilization  would  come  to  nothing.  The  Revolt 
elsewhere — in  half  barbaric  Europe — would  come 
to  no  more  than  the  lopping  off  of  outer  and  in- 
significant things.  The  Baltic  Plain,  sundry  units 
of  the  outer  Germanies  and  Scandinavia,  probably 
Hungary,  possibly  Bohemia,  certain  mountain  val- 
leys in  Switzerland  and  Savoy  and  France  and 
the  Pyrenees,  which  had  suffered  from  lack  of 
instruction  and  could  easily  be  recovered — these 
would  be  affected.  The  outer  parts,  which  had 
never  been  within  the  pale  of  the  Roman  Empire 
might  go.  But  the  soul  and  intelligence  of  Europe 
would  be  kept  sound;  its  general  body  would  re- 
unite and  Christendom  would  once  more  reappear 
whole  and  triumphant.  It  would  have  recon- 
quered these  outer  parts  at  its  leisure:  and 
Poland  was  a  sure  bastion.  We  should,  within 
a  century,  have  been  ourselves  once  more: 
Christian  men. 

So  it  would  have  been — but  for  one  master  trag- 
edy, which  changed  the  whole  scheme.  Of  the 
four  great  remaining  units  of  Western  civilization, 
Iberia,  Italy,  Britain,  Gaul,  one,  at  this  critical  mo- 
ment, broke  down  by  a  tragic  accident  and  lost 
continuity.  It  was  hardly  intended.  It  was  a 
consequence  of  error  much  more  than  an  act  of 
will.     But  it  had  full  effect. 

The  breakdown  of  Britain  and  her  failure  to 
resist  disruption  was  the  chief  event  of  all.     It 


224  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

made  the  Reformation  permanent.  It  confirmed  a 
final  division  in  Europe. 

By  a  curious  accident,  one  province,  extraneous 
to  the  Empire,  Ireland,  heroically  preserved  what 
the  other  extraneous  provinces,  the  Germanies  and 
Scandinavia,  were  to  lose.  In  spite  of  the  loss  of 
Britain,  and  cut  off  by  that  loss  from  direct  suc- 
cor, Ireland  preserved  the  tradition  of  civilization. 

It  must  be  my  next  business  to  describe  the  way 
in  which  Britain  failed  in  the  struggle,  and,  at  the 
hands  of  the  King,  and  of  a  little  group  of  avari- 
cious men  (such  as  the  Howards  among  the 
gentry,  and  the  Cecils  among  the  adventurers) 
changed  for  the  worse  the  history  of  Europe. 


IX 

The  Defection  of  Britain 

One  thing  stands  out  in  the  fate  of  modern  Eu- 
rope: the  profound  cleavage  due  to  the  Reforma- 
tion. One  thing  made  that  wound  (it  was  almost 
mortal)  so  deep  and  lasting:  the  failure  of  one 
ancient  province  of  civilization,  and  one  only,  to 
keep  the  Faith:  this  province  whereof  I  write: 
Britain. 

The  capital  event,  the  critical  moment,  in  the 
great  struggle  of  the  Faith  against  the  Reforma- 
tion, was  the  defection  of  Britain. 

It  is  a  point  which  the  modern  historian,  who  is 
still  normally  anti-Catholic,  does  not  and  cannot 
make.  Yet  the  defection  of  Britain  from  the  Faith 
of  Europe  three  hundred  years  ago  is  certainly  the 
most  important  historical  event  in  the  last  thou- 
sand years :  between  the  saving  of  Europe  from  the 
barbarians  and  these  our  own  times.  It  is  perhaps 
the  most  important  historical  event  since  the  tri- 
umph of  the  Catholic  Church  under  Constantine. 

Let  me  recapitulate  the  factors  of  the  problem 
as  they  would  be  seen  by  an  impartial  observer 
from  some  great  distance  in  time,  or  in  space,  or  in 
mental  attitude.     Let  me  put  them  as  they  would 

225 


226  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

appear  to  one  quite  indifferent  to,  and  remote  from, 
the  antagonists. 

To  such  an  observer  the  history  of  Europe  would 
be  that  of  the  great  Roman  Empire  passing  through 
the  transformation  I  have  described:  its  mind  first 
more  and  more  restless,  then  more  and  more  tend- 
ing to  a  certain  conclusion,  and  that  conclusion  the 
Catholic  Church. 

To  summarize  what  has  gone  before:  the  Cath- 
olic Church  becomes  by  the  fifth  century  the  soul, 
the  vital  principle,  the  continuity  of  Europe.  It 
next  suffers  grievously  from  the  accident,  largely 
geographical,  of  the  Eastern  schism.  It  is  of  its 
nature  perpetually  subject  to  assault;  from  within, 
because  it  deals  with  matters  not  open  to  positive 
proof;  from  without,  because  all  those,  whether 
aliens  or  guests  or  parasites,  who  are  not  of  our 
civilization,  are  naturally  its  enemies. 

The  Roman  Empire  of  the  West,  in  which  the 
purity  and  the  unity  of  this  soul  were  preserved 
from  generation  to  generation,  declined  in  its  body 
during  the  Dark  Ages — say,  up  to  and  rather  be- 
yond the  year  1000.  It  became  coarsened  and  less 
in  its  material  powers.  It  lost  its  central  organiza- 
tion, the  Imperial  Court  (which  was  replaced  first 
by  provincial  military  leaders  or  "kings,"  then, 
later,  by  a  mass  of  local  lordships  jumbled  into 
more  or  less  national  groups).  In  building,  in 
writing,  in  cooking,  in  clothing,  in  drawing,  in 
sculpture,  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  West  (which 
is  ourselves)  forgot  all  but  the  fundamentals  of  its 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  227 

arts — but  it  expanded  so  far  as  its  area  is  con- 
cerned. A  whole  belt  of  barbaric  Germany  re- 
ceived the  Roman  influence — Baptism  and  the 
Mass.  With  the  Creed  there  came  to  these  outer 
parts  reading  and  writing,  building  in  brick  and 
stone — all  the  material  essentials  of  our  civiliza- 
tion— and  what  is  characteristic  of  that  culture, 
the  power  of  thinking  more  clearly. 

It  is  centuries  before  this  slow  digestion  of  the 
barbarian  reached  longitude  ten  degrees  east,  and 
the  Scandinavian  peninsula.  But  a  thousand  years 
after  Our  Lord  it  has  reached  even  these,  and  there 
remains  between  the  unbroken  tradition  of  our 
civilization  in  the  West  and  the  schismatic  but 
Christian  civilization  of  the  Greek  Church,  noth- 
ing but  a  belt  of  paganism  from  the  corner  of  the 
Baltic  southward,  which  belt  is  lessened,  year  after 
year,  by  the  armed  efforts  and  the  rational  domi- 
nance of  Latin  culture.  Our  Christian  and  Roman 
culture  proceeds  continuouslj'^  eastward,  mastering 
the  uncouth. 

After  this  general  picture  of  a  civilization  domi- 
nating and  mastering  in  its  material  decline  a  vast- 
ly greater  area  than  it  had  known  in  the  height  of 
its  material  excellence — this  sort  of  expansion  in 
the  dark — the  impartial  observer,  whom  we  have 
supposed,  would  remark  a  sort  of  dawn. 

That  dawn  came  with  the  eleventh  century: 
1000-1100.  The  Norman  race,  the  sudden  invigor- 
ation  of  the  Papacy,  the  new  victories  in  Spain,  at 
last  the  first  Crusade,  mark  a  turn  in  the  tide  of 


228  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

material  decline,  and  that  tide  works  very  rapidly 
towards  a  new  and  intense  civilization  which  we 
call  that  of  the  Middle  Ages:  that  high  renewal 
which  gives  Europe  a  second  and  most  marvelous 
life,  which  is  a  late  reflowering  of  Rome,  but  of 
Rome  revivified  with  the  virtue  and  the  humor  of 
the  Faith. 

The  second  thing  that  the  observer  would  note  in 
so  general  a  picture  would  be  the  peculiar  exception 
formed  within  it  by  the  group  of  large  islands  ly- 
ing to  the  North  and  West  of  the  Continent.  Of 
these  the  larger,  Britain,  had  been  a  true  Roman 
Province;  but  very  early  in  the  process — in  the 
middle  and  end  of  the  fifth  century — it  had  on  the 
first  assault  of  the  barbarians  been  cut  off  for 
more  than  the  lifetime  of  a  man.  Its  gate  had  been 
held  by  the  barbarian.  Then  it  was  re-Christian- 
ized almost  as  thoroughly  as  though  even  its  East- 
ern part  had  never  lost  the  authority  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  Mission  of  St.  Augustine  recaptured 
Britain — but  Britain  is  remarkable  in  the  history 
of  civilization  for  the  fact  that  alone  of  civilized 
lands  it  needed  to  be  recaptured  at  all.  The  west- 
ern island  of  the  two,  the  smaller  island,  Ireland, 
presented  another  exception. 

It  was  not  compelled  to  the  Christian  culture,  as 
■were  the  German  barbarians  of  the  Continent,  by 
arms.  No  Charlemagne  with  his  Gallic  armies 
forced  it  tardily  to  accept  baptism.  It  was  not 
savage  like  the  Germanies;  it  was  therefore  under 
no  necessity  to  go  to  school.    It  was  not  a  morass 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FA  ITU  229 

of  shifting  tribes;  it  was  a  nation.  But  in  a  most 
exceptional  fashion,  though  already  possessed,  and 
perhaps  because  so  possessed,  of  a  high  pagan  cul- 
ture of  its  own,  it  accepted  within  the  lifetime  of  a 
man,  and  by  spiritual  influences  alone,  the  whole 
spirit  of  the  Creed.  The  civilization  of  the  Ro- 
man West  was  accepted  by  Ireland,  not  as  a  com- 
mand nor  as  an  influence,  but  as  a  discovery. 

Now  let  this  peculiar  fate  of  the  two  islands  to 
the  north  and  west  of  the  Continent  remain  in  the 
observer's  mind,  and  he  will  note,  when  the  shock 
of  what  is  called  "the  Reformation"  comes,  new 
phenomena  attaching  to  those  islands,  cognate  to 
their  early  history. 

Those  phenomena  are  the  thesis  which  I  have  to 
present  in  the  pages  that  follow. 

What  we  call  "the  Reformation"  was  essentially 
the  reaction  of  the  barbaric,  the  ill-tutored  and 
the  isolated  places  external  to  the  old  and  deep- 
rooted  Roman  civilization,  against  the  influences 
of  that  civilization.  The  Reformation  was  not  ra- 
cial. Even  if  there  were  such  a  physical  thing  as  a 
"Teutonic  Race"  (and  there  is  nothing  of  the 
kind),  the  Reformation  shows  no  coincidence  with 
that  race.  The  Reformation  is  simply  the  turning- 
back  of  that  tide  of  Roman  culture  which,  for  five 
hundred  years,  had  set  steadily  forward  and  had 
progressively  dominated  the  insufficient  by  the 
suflicient,  the  slower  by  the  quicker,  the  confused 
by  the  clear-headed.  It  was  a  sort  of  protest  by 
the  conquered  against  a  moral  and  intellectual  su- 


230  EUROPE  AND   THE  FAITH 

periority  which  orfended  them.  The  Slavs  of 
Bohemia  joined  in  that  sincere  protest  of  the  lately 
and  insufficiently  civilized,  quite  as  strongly  as, 
and  even  earlier  than,  the  vague  peoples  of  the 
Sandy  Heaths  along  the  Baltic.  The  Scandinavian, 
physically  quite  ditTerent  from  these  tribes  of  the 
Baltic  Plain,  comes  into  the  game.  Wretched  vil- 
lages in  the  mark  of  Brandenburg,  as  Slavonic  in 
type  as  the  villages  of  Bohemia,  revolt  as  naturally 
against  exalted  and  difficult  mystery  as  do  the  iso- 
lated villages  of  the  Swedish  valleys  or  the  isolated 
rustics  of  the  Cevennes  or  the  Alps.  The  revolt  is 
confused,  instinctive,  and  therefore  enjoying  the 
sincere  motive  which  accompanies  such  risings, 
but  deprived  of  unity  and  of  organizing  power. 
There  has  never  been  a  fixed  Protestant  creed. 
The  common  factor  has  been,  and  is,  reaction 
against,  the  traditions  of  Europe. 

Now  the  point  to  seize  is  this: 

Inimical  as  such  a  revolt  was  to  souls  or  (to 
speak  upon  the  mere  historical  plane)  to  civiliza- 
tion, bad  as  it  was  that  the  tide  of  culture  should 
have  begun  to  ebb  from  the  far  regions  which  it 
had  once  so  beneficently  flooded,  the  Reformation, 
that  is,  the  reaction  against  the  unity,  the  disci- 
pline, and  the  clear  thought  of  Europe,  would 
never  have  counted  largely  in  human  affairs  had  it 
been  confined  to  the  external  fringe  of  the  civilized 
world.  That  fringe  would  probably  have  been  re- 
conquered. The  inherent  force  attaching  to  real- 
ity and  to  the  stronger  mind  should  have  led  to 


EUROPE  A  AD  THE  FAITH  231 

its  recovery.  The  Northern  Germanies  were,  as  a 
fact,  reconquered  when  Richelieu  stepped  in  and 
saved  them  from  their  Southern  superiors.  But 
perhaps  it  would  not  have  been  reconquered.  Per- 
haps it  would  have  lapsed  quite  soon  into  its  orig- 
inal paganism.  At  any  rate  European  culture 
would  have  continued  undivided  and  strong  with- 
out these  outer  regions.  Unfortunately  a  far  worse 
thing  happened. 

Europe  was  rent  and  has  remained  divided. 

The  disaster  was  accomplished  through  forces  1 
will  now  describe. 

Though  the  revolt  was  external  to  the  founda- 
tions" of  Europe,  to  the  ancient  provinces  of  the 
Empire,  yet  an  external  consequence  of  that  re- 
volt arose  within  the  ancient  provinces.  It  may  be 
briefly  told.  The  wealthy  took  advantage  within 
the  heart  of  civilization  itself  of  this  external  re- 
volt against  order;  for  it  is  always  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  wealthy  to  deny  general  conceptions  of 
right  and  wrong,  to  question  a  popular  philosophy 
and  to  weaken  the  drastic  and  immediate  power 
of  the  human  will,  organized  throughout  the  whole 
community.  It  is  always  in  the  nature  of  great 
wealth  to  be  insanely  tempted  (though  it  should 
know  from  active  experience  how  little  wealth  can 
give),  to  push  on  to  more  and  more  domination 
over  the  bodies  of  men — and  it  can  do  so  best  by 
attacking  fixed  social  restraints. 

^he  landed  squires  then,  and  the  great  mer- 
chants, powerfully  supported  by  the  Jewish  finan- 


232  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

cial  communities  in  the  principal  towns,  felt  that 
— with  the  Reformation — their  opportunity  had 
come.  The  largest  fortune  holders,  the  nobles,  the 
merchants  of  the  ports  and  local  capitals  even  in 
Gaul  (that  nucleus  and  stronghold  of  ordered  hu- 
man life)  licked  their  lips.  Everywhere  in  North- 
ern Italy,  in  Southern  Germany,  upon  the  Rhine, 
wherever  wealth  had  congested  in  a  few  hands,  the 
chance  of  breaking  with  the  old  morals  was  a 
powerful  appeal  to  the  wealthy;  and,  therefore, 
throughout  Europe,  even  in  its  most  ancient 
seats  of  civilization,  the  outer  barbarian  had 
allies. 

These  rich  men,  whose  avarice  betrayed  Europe 
from  within,  had  no  excuse.  Theirs  was  not  any 
dumb  instinctive  revolt  like  that  of  the  Outer  Ger- 
manics, the  Outer  Slavs,  nor  the  neglected  moun- 
tain valleys,  against  order  and  against  clear 
thought,  with  all  the  hard  consequences  that  clear 
thought  brings.  They  were  in  no  way  subject  to 
enthusiasm  for  the  vaguer  emotions  roused  by  the 
Gospel  or  for  the  more  turgid  excitements  deriv- 
able from  Scripture  and  an  uncorrected  orgy  of 
prophecy.  They  were  "on  the  make."  The  rich 
in  Montpelier  and  Nimes,  a  knot  of  them  in  Rome 
itself,  many  in  Milan,  in  Lyons,  in  Paris,  enlisted 
intellectual  aid  for  the  revolt,  flattered  the  atheism 
of  the  Renaissance,  supported  the  strong  inflamed 
critics  of  clerical  misliving,  and  even  winked  sol- 
emnly at  the  lunatic  inspirations  of  obscure  men 
and  women  filled  with  "visions."     They  did  all 


EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH  233 

these  things  as  though  their  object  was  religious 
change.    But  their  true  object  was  money. 

One  group,  and  one  alone,  of  the  European  na- 
tions was  too  recently  filled  with  combat  against 
vile  non-Christian  things  to  accept  any  parley  with 
this  anti-Christian  turmoil.  That  unit  was  the 
Iberian  Peninsula.  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  espe- 
cially on  the  part  of  those  who  realize  that  the 
sword  fits  the  hand  of  the  Church  and  that  Cath- 
olicism is  never  more  alive  than  when  it  is  in  arms, 
I  say  it  is  worthy  of  remark  by  these  that  Spain 
and  Portugal  through  the  very  greatness  of  an  ex- 
perience still  recent  when  the  Reformation  broke, 
lost  the  chance  of  combat.  There  came  indeed, 
from  Spain  (but  from  the  Basque  nation  there) 
that  weapon  of  steel,  the  Society  of  Jesus,  which 
St.  Ignatius  formed,  and  which,  surgical  and  mili- 
tary, saved  the  Faith,  and  therefore  Europe.  But 
the  Iberian  Peninsula  rejecting  as  one  whole  and 
with  contempt  and  with  abhorrence  (and  reject- 
ing rightly)  any  consideration  of  revolt — even 
among  its  rich  men — thereby  lost  its  opportunity 
for  combat.  It  did  not  enjoy  the  religious  wars 
which  revivified  France,  and  it  may  be  urged  that 
Spain  would  be  the  stronger  today  had  it  fallen  to 
her  task,  as  it  did  to  the  general  populace  of  Gaul, 
to  come  to  hand-grips  with  the  Reformation  at 
home,  to  test  it,  to  know  it,  to  dominate  it,  to  bend 
the  muscles  upon  it,  and  to  reemerge  triumphant 
from  the  struggle. 

I  say,  then,  that  there  was  present  in  the  field 


234  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

against  the  Church  a  powerful  ally  for  the  Reform- 
ers: and  that  ally  was  the  body  of  immoral  rich 
who  hoped  to  profit  by  a  general  break  in  the  pop- 
ular organization  of  society.  The  atheism  and  the 
wealth,  the  luxury  and  the  sensuality,  the  scholar- 
ship and  aloofness  of  the  Renaissance  answered, 
over  the  heads  of  the  Catholic  populace,  the  call  of 
barbarism.  The  Iconoclasts  of  greed  joined  hands 
with  the  Iconoclasts  of  blindness  and  rage  and 
with  the  Iconoclasts  of  academic  pride. 

Nevertheless,  even  with  such  allies,  barbarism 
would  have  failed,  the  Reformation  would  today 
be  but  an  historical  episode  without  fruit,  Europe 
would  still  be  Christendom,  had  not  there  been 
added  the  decisive  factor  of  all — which  was  the 
separation  of  Britain. 

Now  how  did  Britain  go,  and  why  was  the  loss 
of  Britain  of  such  capital  importance? 

The  loss  of  Britain  was  of  such  capital  impor- 
tance because  Britain  alone  of  those  who  departed, 
was  Roman,  and  therefore  capable  of  endurance 
and  increase.  And  why  did  Britain  fail  in  that 
great  ordeal?    It  is  a  question  harder  to  answer. 

The  province  of  Britain  was  not  a  very  great  one 
in  area  or  in  numbers,  when  the  Reformation  broke 
out.  It  was,  indeed,  very  wealthy  for  its  size,  as 
were  the  Netherlands,  but  its  mere  wealth  does  not 
account  for  the  fundamental  importance  of  the 
loss  of  Britain  to  the  Faith  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. The  real  point  was  that  one  and  only  one  of 
the  old  Roman  provinces  with  their  tradition  of 


EVROPE  AAX>  THE  FAITH  235 

civilization,  letters,  persuasive  power,  multiple  soul 
— one  and  only  one  went  over  to  the  barbaric 
enemy  and  gave  that  enemy  its  aid.  That  one  was 
Britain.  And  the  conse(iucnce  of  its  defection 
was  the  perpetuation  and  extension  of  an  in- 
creasingly evil  division  within  the  structure  of 
the  WesTi 

[To  say  that  Britain  lost  hold  of  tradition  in  the 
sixteenth  century  because  Britain  is  "Teutonic,"  is 
to  talk  nonsense.  It  is  to  explain  a  real  problem 
by  inventing  unreal  words.  Britain  is  not  "Teu- 
tonic," nor  does  the  word  "Teutonic"  itself  mean 
anything  definite.  To  say  that  Britain  revolted 
because  the  seeds  of  revolt  were  stronger  in  her 
than  in  any  ancient  province  of  Europe,  is  to  know 
nothing  of  history.  The  seeds  of  revolt  were  in 
her  then  as  they  were  in  every  other  community; 
as  they  must  be  in  every  individual  who  may  find 
any  form  of  discipline  a  burden  which  he  is 
tempted,  in  a  moment  of  disorder,  to  lay  down. 
But  to  pretend  that  England  and  the  lowlands  of 
Scotland,  to  pretend  that  the  Province  of  Britain 
in  our  general  civilization  was  more  ready  for  the 
change  than  the  infected  portions  of  Southern 
Gaul,  or  the  humming  towns  of  Northern  Italy,  or 
the  intense  life  of  Hainult,  or  Brabant,  is  to  show 
great  ignorance  of  the  European  past. 

Well,  then,  how  did  Britain  break  away? 

I  beg  the  reader  to  pay  a  special  attention  to  the 
next  page  or  so.  I  believe  it  to  be  of  capital  value 
in  explaining  the  general  history  of  Europe,  and  I 


236  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

know  it  to  be  hardly  ever  told;  or — if  told  at  all — 
told  only  in  fragments. 

England  went  because  of  three  things.  First, 
her  Squires  had  already  become  too  powerful.  In 
other  words,  the  economic  power  of  a  small  class 
of  wealthy  men  had  grown,  on  account  of  peculiar 
insular  conditions,  greater  than  was  healthy  for 
the  community. 

•  Secondly,  England  was,  more  than  any  other 
part  of  Western  Europe  (save  the  Batavian 
March)  ,1  a  series  of  markets  and  of  ports,  a  place 
of  very  active  cosmopolitan  influence,  in  which 
new  opportunities  for  the  corrupt,  new  messages 
of  the  enthusiastic,  were  frequent. 
,5  -In  the  third  place,  that  curious  phenomena  on 
which  I  dwelt  in  the  last  chapter,  the  superstitious 
attachment  of  citizens  to  the  civil  power,  to  awe 
of,  and  devotion  to,  the  monarch,  was  exaggerated 
in  England  as  nowhere  else. 

Now  put  these  three  things  together,  especially 
the  first  and  third  (for  the  second  was  both  of 
minor  importance  and  more  superficial),  and  you 
will  appreciate  why  England  fell. 

One  small,  too  wealthy  class,  tainted  with  the 
atheism  that  always  creeps  into  wealth  long  and 
securely  enjoyed,  was  beginning  to  possess  toe 
much  of  English  land.  It  would  take  far  too  long 
to  describe  here  what  the  process  had  been.  It  is 
true  that  the  absolute  monopoly  of  the  soil,  the 

II  mean  Belgium:  that  frontier  of  Roman  influence  upon  the 
lower  Rhine  which  so  happily  lield  out  for  the  F'aith  and  just 
preserved  it. 


EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH  237 

gripping  and  the  strangling  of  the  populace  by 
landlords,  is  a  purely  Protestant  development. 
Nothing  of  that  kind  had  happened  or  would  have 
been  conceived  of  as  possible  in  pre-Reformation 
England;  but  still  something  like  a  quarter  of  the 
land  (or  a  little  less)  had  already  before  the  Refor- 
mation got  into  the  full  possession  of  one  small 
class  which  had  also  begun  to  encroach  upon  the 
judiciary,  in  some  measure  to  supplant  the  pop- 
ulace in  local  law-making,  and  quite  appreciably 
to  supplant  the  King  in  central  law-making. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood;  the  England  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  the  England  of  the  genera- 
tion just  before  the  Reformation,  was  not  an  Eng- 
land of  Squires;  it  was  not  an  England  of  land- 
lords; it  was  still  an  England  of  Englishmen.  The 
towns  were  quite  free.  To  this  day  old  boroughs 
nearly  always  show  a  great  number  of  freeholds. 
The  process  by  which  the  later  English  aristocracy 
(now  a  plutocracy)  had  grown  up,  was  but  in  germ 
before  the  Reformation.  Nor  had  that  germ 
sprouted.  But  for  the  Reformation  it  would  not 
have  matured.  Sooner  or  later  a  popular  revolt 
(had  the  Faith  revived)  would  have  killed  the 
growing  usurpation  of  the  wealthy.  But  the  germ 
was  there;  and  the  Reformation  coming  just  as  it 
did,  both  was  helped  by  the  rich  and  helped  them. 

The  slow  acquisition  of  considerable  power  over 
the  Courts  of  Law  and  over  the  soil  of  the  country 
by  an  oligarchy,  imperfect  though  that  acquisition 
was  as  yet,   already  presented  just   after    1500  a 


238  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

predisposing  condition  to  the  disease.  It  may  be 
urged  that  if  the  English  people  had  fought  the 
growing  power  of  the  Squires  more  vigorously,  the 
Squires  would  not  have  mastered  them  as  they 
did,  during  and  on  account  of  the  religious  revolu- 
tion. Possibly;  and  the  enemies  of  the  English 
people  are  quick  to  suggest  that  some  native  slug- 
gishness permitted  the  gradual  weighing  down  of 
the  social  balance  in  favor  of  the  rich.  But  no  one 
who  can  even  pretend  to  know  mediaeval  England 
will  say  that  the  English  consciously  desired  or 
willingly  permitted  such  a  state  of  affairs  to  grow 
up.  Successful  foreign  wars,  dynastic  trouble,  a 
recent  and  vigorous  awakening  of  national  con- 
sciousness, which  consciousness  had  centred  in 
the  wealthier  classes — all  these  combined  to  let  the 
evil  in  without  warning,  and,  on  the  eve  of  the 
Reformation,  a  rich,  avaricious  class  was  already 
empowered  to  act  in  Britain,  ready  to  grasp,  as  all 
the  avaricious  classes  were  throughout  the  West- 
ern world,  at  the  opportunity  to  revolt  against  that 
Faith  which  has  ever  suspected,  constrained  and 
reformed  the  tyranny  of  wealth. 

Now  add  to  this  the  strange,  but  at  that  time 
very  real,  worship  of  government  as  a  fetish.  This 
spirit  did  not  really  strengthen  government:  far 
from  it.  A  superstition  never  strengthens  its  ob- 
ject, nor  even  makes  of  the  supposed  power  of 
that  object  a  reality.  But  though  it  did  not  give 
real  power  to  the  long  intention  of  the  prince,  it 
gave  to  the  momentary  word  of  the  prince  a  fan- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  239 

tastic  power.  In  such  a  combination  of  circum- 
stances— nascent  oligarchy,  but  the  prince  wor- 
shipped— you  get,  holding  the  position  of  prince, 
Henry  VIII.,  a  thorough  Tudor,  that  is,  a  man  weak 
almost  to  the  point  of  irresponsibility  where  his 
passions  were  concerned;  violent  from  that  funda- 
mental weakness  which,  in  the  absence  of  opp^psi- 
tion,  ruins  things  as  effectively  as  any  strength.' 

No  executive  power  in  Europe  was  less  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  revolt  against  civilization  than  was 
the  Tudor  family.  Upon  the  contrary,  Henry  VII., 
his  son,  and  his  two  granddaughters  if  anything 
exceeded  in  their  passion  for  the  old  order  of  the 
Western  world.  But  at  the  least  sign  of  resistance, 
Mary  who  burnt,  Elizabeth  who  intrigued,  Henry, 
their  father,  who  pillaged,  Henry,  their  grand- 
father, who  robbed  and  saved,  were  one.  To  these 
characters  slight  resistance  was  a  spur;  with 
strong  manifold  opposition  they  were  quite  power- 
less to  deal.  Their  minds  did  not  grip  (for  their 
minds,  though  acute,  were  not  large)  but  their 
passions  shot.  And  one  may  compare  them,  when 
their  passions  of  pride,  of  lust,  of  jealousy,  of 
doting,  of  avarice  or  of  facile  power  were  aroused, 
to  vehement  children.  Never  was  there  a  ruling 
family  less  statesmanlike;  never  one  less  full  of 
stuff  and  of  creative  power. 

Henry,  urged  by  an  imperious  young  woman, 
who  had  gained  control  of  him,  desired  a  divorce 
from  his  wife,  Katherine  of  Aragon,  grown  old  for 
him.    The  Papal  Court  temporized  with  him  and 


240  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

opposed  him.  He  was  incapable  of  negotiation 
and  still  more  incapable  of  foresight.  His  energy, 
which  was  "of  an  Arabian  sort,"  blasted  through 
the  void,  because  a  void  was  there:  none  would 
then  withstand  the  Prince.  Of  course,  it  seemed 
to  him  no  more  than  one  of  these  recurrent  quar- 
rels with  the  mundane  power  of  Rome,  which  all 
Kings  (and  Saints  among  them)  had  engaged  in 
for  many  hundred  years.  All  real  powers  thus 
conflict  in  all  times.  But,  had  he  known  it  (and 
he  did  not  know  it),  the  moment  was  fatally  in- 
opportune for  playing  that  game.  Henry  never 
meant  to  break  permanently  with  the  unity  of 
Christendom.  A  disruption  of  that  unity  was  prob- 
ably inconceivable  to  him.  He  meant  to  "exercise 
pressure."  All  his  acts  from  the  decisive  Procla- 
mation of  September  19,  1530,  onwards  prove  it. 
But  the  moment  was  the  moment  of  a  breaking- 
point  throughout  Europe,  and  he,  Henry,  blund- 
ered into  disaster  without  knowing  what  the  full- 
ness of  that  moment  was.  He  was  devout,  espe- 
cially to  the  Blessed  Sacrament.  He  kept  the 
Faith  for  himself,  and  he  tried  hard  to  keep  it  for 
others.  But  having  lost  unity,  he  let  in  what  he 
loathed.  Not,  so  long  as  he  lived,  could  those  doc- 
trines of  the  Reformers  triumph  here:  but  he  had 
compromised  with  their  spirit,  and  at  his  death  a 
strong  minority — perhaps  a  tenth  of  England, 
more  of  London — was  already  hostile  to  the  Creed. 
It  was  the  same  thing  with  the  suppression  of 
the  monasteries.     Henry  meant  no  effect  on  re- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  241 

ligion  by  that  loot :  he,  none  the  less,  destroyed  it. 
He  intended  to  enrich  the  Crown:  he  ruined  it. 
In  the  matter  of  their  linancial  endowment,  an 
economic  crisis,  produced  by  the  unequal  growth 
of  economic  powers,  had  made  the  monastic  found- 
ation ripe  for  re-settlement.  Religious  orders  were 
here  wealthy  without  reason — poor  in  spirit  and 
numbers,  but  rich  in  land;  there  impoverished 
without  reason — rich  in  poi)ularity  and  spiritual 
power,  but  poor  in  land.  The  dislocation,  which 
all  institutions  necessarily  suffer  on  the  economic 
side  through  the  mere  elllux  of  time,  inclined 
every  government  in  Europe  to  a  re-settlement  of 
religious  endowment.  Everywhere  it  took  place; 
everywhere  it  involved  dissolution  and  restoration. 
I  But  Henry  did  not  re-settle.  He  plundered  and 
broke.  He  used  the  contemporary  idolatry  of 
executive  power  just  as  much  at  Reading  or  in 
the  Blackfriars  of  London,  where  unthinking  and 
immediate  popular  feeling  was  with  him,  as  at 
Glastonbury  where  it  was  against  him,  as  in  York- 
shire where  it  was  in  arms,  as  in  Galway  where 
there  was  no  bearing  with  it  at  all.  There  was  no 
largeness  in  him  nor  any  comprehension  of  com- 
plexity, and  when  in  this  Jacobin,  unexampled 
way,  he  had  simply  got  rid  of  that  which  he  should 
have  restored  and  transformed,  of  what  effect  was 
that  vast  act  of  spoliation?  It  paralyzed  the 
Church.  It  ultimately  brought  down  the  Mon' 
archy. 

From  a  fourth  to  a  third  of  the  economic  power 


242  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

over  the  means  of  production  in  England,  which 
had  been  vested  top-heavily  in  the  religious  found- 
ations— here,  far  too  rich,  there,  far  too  poor — 
Henry  got  by  one  enormous  confiscation.  Yet  he 
made  no  permanent  addition  to  the  wealth  of 
the  Crown.  On  the  contrary,  he  started  its  de- 
cline. The  land  passed  by  an  instinctive  multiple 
process — but  very  rapidly — to  the  already  power- 
ful class  which  had  begun  to  dominate  the  villages. 
Then,  when  it  was  too  late,  the  Tudors  attempted 
to  stem  the  tide.  But  the  thing  was  done.  Upon 
the  indifference  which  is  always  common  to  a  so- 
ciety long  and  profoundly  Catholic  and  ignorant 
of  heresy,  or,  having  conquered  heresy,  ignorant 
at  any  rate  of  struggle  for  the  Faith,  two  ardent 
minorities  converged:  the  small  minority  of  con- 
fused enthusiasts  who  really  did  desire  what  they 
believed  to  be  a  restoration  of  "primitive"  Chris- 
tianity: the  much  larger  minority  of  men  now 
grown  almost  invincibly  powerful  in  the  economic 
sphere.  The  Squires,  twenty  years  after  Henry's 
death,  had  come  to  possess,  through  the  ruin  of 
religion,  something  like  half  the  land  of  England. 
With  the  rapidity  of  a  fungus  growth  the  new 
wealth  spread  over  the  desolation  of  the  land. 
The  enriched  captured  both  the  Universities,  all 
the  Courts  of  Justice,  most  of  the  public  schools. 
They  won  their  great  civil  war  against  the  Crown. 
Within  a  century  after  Henry's  folly,  they  had 
established  themselves  in  the  place  of  what  had 
once  been  the  monarchy  and  central  government 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  243 

of  England.  The  impoverished  Crown  resisted  in 
vain;  they  killed  one  embarrassed  King — Charles 
I.,  and  they  set  up  his  son,  Charles  II.,  as  an  insuf- 
ficiently salaried  puppet.  Since  their  victory  over 
the  Crown,  they  and  the  capitalists,  who  have 
sprung  from  their  avarice  and  their  philosophy, 
and  largely  from  their  very  loins,  have  been  com- 
pletely masters  of  England. 

Here  the  reader  may  say:  "What!  this  large  na- 
tional movement  to  be  interpreted  as  the  work  of 
such  minorities?  A  few  thousand  squires  and 
merchants  backing  a  few  more  thousand  enthu- 
siasts, changed  utterly  the  mass  of  England?" 
Yes;  to  interpret  it  otherwise  is  to  read  history 
backwards.  It  is  to  think  that  England  then  was 
what  England  later  became.  (  There  is  no  more 
fatal  fault  in  the  reading  of  hfstory,  nor  any  illu- 
sion to  which  the  human  mind  is  more  prone.  To 
read  the  remote  past  in  the  light  of  the  recent 
past;  to  think  the  process  of  the  one  towards  the 
other  "inevitable;"  to  regard  the  whole  matter  as 
a  slow  inexorable  process,  independent  of  the 
human  will,  still  suits  the  materialist  pantheism 
of  our  time.  There  is  an  inherent  tendency  in  all 
men  to  this  fallacy  of  reading  themselves  into  the 
past,  and  of  thinking  their  own  mood  a  consum- 
mation at  once  excellent  and  necessary:  and  most 
men  who  write  of  these  things  imagine  a  vaguely 
Protestant  Tudor  England  growing  consciously 
Protestant  in  the  England  of  the  Stuarts. 

That  is  not  history.    It  is  history  to  put  yourself 


244  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

by  a  combined  eflfort  of  reading  and  of  imagination 
into  the  shoes  of  Tuesday,  as  though  you  did  not 
know  what  Wednesday  was  to  be,  and  then  to 
describe  what  Tuesday  was.  England  did  not 
lose  the  Faith  in  1550-1620  because  she  was  Prot- 
estant then.  Rather,  she  is  Protestant  now  be- 
cause she  then  lost  the  Faith. 

Put  yourself  into  the  shoes  of  a  sixteenth  cen- 
tury Englishman  in  the  midst  of  the  Reformation, 
and  what  do  you  perceive?  A  society  wholly 
Catholic  in  tradition,  lax  and  careless  in  Catholic 
practice;  irritated  or  enlivened  here  and  there  by 
a  few  furious  preachers,  or  by  a  few  enthusiastic 
scholars,  at  once  devoted  to  and  in  terror  of  the 
civil  government;  intensely  national;  in  all  the 
roots  and  traditions  of  its  civilization,  Roman; 
impatient  of  the  disproportion  of  society,  and  in 
particular  of  economic  disproportion  in  the  re- 
ligious aspect  of  society,  because  the  religious 
function,  by  the  very  definition  of  Catholicism,  by 
its  very  Creed,  should  be  the  first  to  redress  ty- 
rannies.- Upon  that  Englishman  comes  first,  a 
mania  for  his  King;  next,  a  violent  economic  revo- 
lution, which,  in  many  parts,  can  be  made  to  seem 
an  approach  to  justice;  finally,  a  national  appeal 
of  the  strongest  kind  against  the  encroaching 
power  of  Spain. 

When  the  work  was  done,  say  by  1620,  the 
communication  between  England  and  those  parts 
of  the  ancient  West,  which  were  still  furiously 
resisting  the  storm,  was  cut.     No  spiritual  force 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  245 

could  move  England  after  the  Armada  and  its 
effect,  save  what  might  arise  spontaneously  in  the 
many  excited  men  who  still  believed  (they  con- 
tinued to  believe  it  for  fifty  years)  that  the  whole 
Church  of  Christ  had  gone  wrong  for  centuries; 
that  its  original  could  be  restored  and  that  per- 
sohal  revelations  were  granted  them  for  their 
guidance. 

These  visionaries  were  the  Reformers;  to  these, 
souls  still  athirst  for  spiritual  guidance  turned. 
They  were  a  minority  even  at  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  the  last  years  of  Elizabeth,  but 
they  were  a  minority  full  of  initiative  and  of  ac- 
tion. With  the  turn  of  the  century  (1600-1620) 
the  last  men  who  could  remember  Catholic  train- 
ing were  very  old  or  dead.  The  new  generation 
could  turn  to  nothing  but  the  new  spirit.  For 
authority  it  could  find  nothing  definite  but  a 
printed  book:  a  translation  of  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures. For  teachers,  nothing  but  this  minority,  the 
Reformers.  That  minority,  though  remaining  a 
minority,  leavened  and  at  last  controlled  the  whole 
nation:  by  the  first  third  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury Britain  was  utterly  cut  off  from  the  unity  of 
Christendom  and  its  new  character  was  sealed. 
The  Catholic  Faith  was  dead. 

The  governing  class  remained  largely  indifferent 
(as  it  still  is)  to  religion,  yet  it  remained  highly 
cultured.  The  populace  drifted  here,  into  com- 
plete indifference,  there,  into  orgiastic  forms  of 
worship.     The  middle  class  went  over  in  a  solid 


246  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

body  to  the  enemy.  The  barbarism  of  the  outer 
Germanics  permeated  it  and  transformed  it.  The 
closer-reasoned,  far  more  perverted  and  harder 
French  heresy  of  Calvin  partly  deflected  the  cur- 
rent— and  a  whole  new  society  was  formed  and 
launched.    That  was  the  English  Reformation. 

Its  effect  upon  Europe  was  stupendous;  for, 
though  England  was  cut  off,  England  was  still 
England.  You  could  not  destroy  in  a  Roman  prov- 
ince the  great  traditions  of  municipality  and  let- 
ters. It  was  as  though  a  phalanx  of  trained  troops 
had  crossed  the  frontier  in  some  border  war  and 
turned  against  their  former  comrades.  England 
lent,  and  has  from  that  day  continuously  lent, 
the  strength  of  a  great  civilized  tradition  to  forces 
whose  original  initiative  was  directed  against  Eu- 
ropean civilization  and  its  tradition.  The  loss  of 
Britain  was  the  one  great  wound  in  the  body  of 
the  Western  world.     It  is  not  yet  healed. 

Yet  all  this  while  that  other  island  of  the  group 
to  the  Northwest  of  Europe,  that  island  which 
had  never  been  conquered  by  armed  civilization 
as  were  the  Outer  Germanics,  but  had  sponta- 
neously accepted  the  Faith,  presented  a  contrast- 
ing exception.  Against  the  loss  of  Britain,  which 
had  been  a  Roman  province,  the  Faith,  when  the 
smoke  of  battle  cleared  off,  could  discover  the  as- 
tonishing loyalty  of  Ireland.  And  over  against  this 
exceptional  province — Britain — now  lost  to  the 
Faith,  lay  an  equally  exceptional  and  unique  outer 
part  which  had  never  been  a  Roman  province,  yet 


EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH  247 

which  now  remained  true  to  the  tradition  of  Ro- 
man men;  it  halanced  the  map  like  a  counter- 
weight. The  efforts  to  destroy  the  Faith  in  Ireland 
have  exceeded  in  violence,  persistence,  and  cruelty 
any  persecution  in  any  part  or  time  of  the  world. 
They  have  failed.  As  I  cannot  explain  why  they 
have  failed,  so  J  shall  not  attempt  to  explain  how 
and  why  the  Faith  in  Ireland  was  saved  when  the 
Faith  in  Britain  went  under.  I  do  not  helieve  it 
capable  of  an  historic  explanation.  It  seems  to  me 
a  phenomenon  essentially  miraculous  in  character, 
not  generally  attached  (as  are  all  historical  phe- 
nomena) to  the  general  and  divine  purpose  that 
governs  our  large  political  events,  but  directly  and 
specially  attached.  It  is  of  great  significance; 
how  great,  men  will  be  able  to  see  many  years 
hence  when  another  definite  battle  is  joined  be- 
tween the  forces  of  the  Church  and  her  opponents. 
For  the  Irish  race  alone  of  all  Europe  has  main- 
tained a  perfect  integrity  and  has  kept  serene, 
without  internal  reactions  and  without  their  con- 
sequent disturbances,  the  soul  of  Europe  which  is 
the  Catholic  Church. 

I  have  now  nothing  left  to  set  down  but  the  con- 
clusion of  this  disaster:  its  spiritual  result — an 
isolation  of  the  soul;  its  political  result — a  conse- 
quence of  the  spiritual — the  prodigious  release  of 
energy,  the  consequent  advance  of  special  knowl- 
edge, the  domination  of  the  few  under  a  competi-, 
tion  left  unrestrained,  the  subjection  of  the  many,^ 
the  ruin  of  happiness,  the  final  threat  of  chaos.      \ 


Conclusion 

The  grand  effect  of  the  Reformation  was  the 
isolation  of  the  soul. 

This  was  its  fruit :  from  this  all  its  consequences 
proceed:  not  only  those  clearly  noxious,  which 
have  put  in  jeopardy  the  whole  of  our  traditions 
and  all  our  happiness,  but  those  apparently  advan- 
tageous, especially  in  material  things. 

The  process  cannot  be  seen  at  work  if  we  take 
a  particular  date — especially  too  early  a  date — and 
call  it  the  moment  of  the  catastrophe.  There  was 
a  long  interval  of  confusion  and  doubt,  in  which 
it  was  not  certain  whether  the  catastrophe  would 
be  final  or  no,  in  which  its  final  form  remained 
undetermined,  and  only  upon  the  conclusion  of 
which  could  modern  Europe  with  its  new  divisions, 
and  its  new  fates,  be  perceived  clearly.  The  breach 
with  authority  began  in  the  very  first  years  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  It  is  not  till  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  at  least,  and  even  somewhat 
later,  that  the  new  era  begins. 

For  more  than  a  hundred  years  the  conception 
of  the  struggle  as  an  oecumenical  struggle,  as  some- 
thing affecting  the  whole  body  of  Europe,  con- 
tinued.    The  general  upheaval,  the  revolt,  which 

248 


EUROPE  AXD  THE  FAITH  249 

first  shook  the  West  in  the  early  years  of  the  six- 
teenth century — to  take  a  particular  year,  the  year 
1517 — concerned  all  our  civilization,  was  every- 
where debated,  produced  an  universal  reaction  met 
by  as  universal  a  resistance,  for  three  generations 
of  men.  No  young  man  who  saw  the  first  out- 
break of  the  storm  could  imagine  it  even  in  old 
age,  as  a  disruption  of  Europe.  No  such  man  lived 
to  see  it  more  than  half  way  through. 
(It  was  not  till  a  corresponding  date  in  the  suc- 
ceeding century — or  rather  later — not  till  Elizabeth 
of  England  and  Henry  IV.  of  France  were 
dead  (and  all  the  protagonists,  the  Reformers  on 
the  one  side,  Loyola,  Neri,  on  the  other,  long  dead) 
not  till  the  career  of  Richelieu  in  the  one  country 
and  the  beginnings  of  an  aristocratic  Parliament  in 
England  were  apparent,  that  the  Reformation 
could  clearly  be  seen  to  have  separated  certain  dis- 
tricts of  our  civilization  from  the  general  traditions 
of  the  whole,  and  to  have  produced,  in  special  re- 
gions and  sections  of  society,  the  peculiar  Protes- 
tant type  which  was  to  mark  the  future. 

The  work  of  the  Reformation  was  accomplished, 
one  may  say,  a  little  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War.  England  in  particular  was 
definitely  Protestant  by  the  decade  1620-1630— 
hardly  earlier.  The  French  Huguenot  body, 
though  still  confused  with  political  efTort,  had 
come  to  have  a  separate  and  real  existence  at  about 
the  same  time.  The  Oligarchy  of  Dutch  merchants 
had  similarly  cut  ofT  their  part  of  the  Low  Coun- 


250  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

tries  from  imperial  rule,  and  virtually  established 
their  independence.  The  North  German  Princi- 
palities and  sundry  smaller  states  of  the  mountains 
(notably  Geneva),  had  definitely  received  the  new 
stamp.  As  definitely  France,  Bohemia,  the  Dan- 
ube, Poland  and  Italy  and  all  the  South  were 
saved. 

Though  an  armed  struggle  was  long  to  continue, 
though  the  North  Germans  were  nearly  recaptured 
by  the  Imperial  Power  and  only  saved  by  French 
policy,  though  we  were  to  have  a  reflex  of  it  here 
in  the  Civil  Wars  and  the  destruction  of  the  Crown, 
and  though  the  last  struggle  against  the  Stuarts 
and  the  greater  general  war  against  Louis  XIV. 
were  but  sequels  to  the  vast  affair,  yet  the  great 
consequence  of  that  affair  was  fixed  before  these 
wars  began.  The  first  third  of  the  seventeenth 
century  launches  a  new  epoch.  From  about  that 
time  there  go  forward  upon  parallel  lines  the  great 
spiritual  and  consequent  temporal  processes  of 
modern  Europe.  They  have  yet  to  come  to  judg- 
ment, for  they  are  not  yet  fulfilled :  but  perhaps 
their  judgment  is  near. 

These  processes  filling  the  last  three  hundred 
years  have  been  as  follows :  (1)  A  rapid  extension 
of  physical  science  and  with  it  of  every  other  form 
of  acquaintance  with  demonstrable  and  measur- 
able things.  (2)  The  rise,  chiefly  in  the  new 
Protestant  part  of  Europe  (but  spreading  thence  in 
part  to  the  Catholic)  of  what  we  call  today  "Cap- 
italism," that  is,  the  possession  of  the  means  of 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  251 

production  by  the  few,  and  their  exploitation  of 
the~many.  (3)  The  corruption  of  the  principle 
of  "authority  "until  it  was  confused  with  mere 
force.  (4)  The  general,  though  not  universal, 
growth  of  total  wealth  with  the  growth  of  physical 
knowledge.  (5)  The  ever  widening  effect  of  skepti- 
cism, which,  whether  masked  under  traditional 
forms  or  no,  was  from  the  beginning  a  spirit  of 
complete  negation  and  led  at  last  to  the  question- 
ing not  only  of  any  human  institutions,  but  of  the 
very  forms  of  thought  and  of  the  mathematical 
truths.  (6)  With  all  these  of  course  we  have  had 
a  universal  mark — the  progressive  extension  of 
despair. 

'Could  anyone  look  back  upon  these  three  cen- 
turies from  some  very  great  distance  of  time,  he 
would  see  them  as  an  episode  of  extraordinary  ex- 
tension in  things  that  should  be  dissociated: 
knowledge  and  wealth,  on  the  one  hand,  the  un- 
happiness  of  men  upon  the  other.  And  he  would 
see  that  as  the  process  matured,  or  rather  as  the 
corruption  deepened,  all  its  marks  were  pushed  to 
a  degree  so  extreme  as  to  jeopardize  at  last  the 
very  structure  of  European  society.  Physical  sci- 
ence acquired  such  power,  the  oppression  of  the 
poor  was  pushed  to  such  a  length,  the  reasoning 
spirit  in  man  was  permitted  to  attain  such  a  totter- 
ing pitch  of  insecurity,  that  a  question  never  yet 
put  to  Europe  arose  at  last — whether  Europe,  not 
from  external  foes,  but  from  her  own  inward  lesion 
may  not  faiT) 


252  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

Corresponding  to  that  terrible  and  as  yet  un- 
answered question — the  culmination  of  so  much 
evil — necessarily  arises  this  the  sole  vital  formula 
of  our  time:  "Europe  must  return  to  the  Faith, 
or  she  will  perish." 

I  have  said  that  the  prime  product  of  the  Refor- 
mation was  the  isolation  of  the  soul.  That  truth 
contains,  in  its  development,  very  much  more  than 
its  mere  statement  might  promise. 

The  isolation  of  the  soul  means  a  loss  of  cor- 
porate sustenance;  of  the  sane  balance  produced 
by  general  experience,  the  weight  of  security,  and 
the  general  will.  The  isolation  of  the  soul  is  the 
very  definition  of  its  unhappiness.  But  this  sol- 
vent applied  to  society  does  very  much  more  than 
merely  complete  and  confirm  human  misery. 

In  the  first  place  and  underlying  all,  the  isola- 
tion of  the  soul  releases  in  a  society  a  furious  new 
accession  of  force.  The  break-up  of  any  stable 
system  in  physics,  as  in  society,  makes  actual  a 
prodigious  reserve  of  potential  energy.  It  trans- 
forms the  power  that  was  keeping  things  together 
with  a  power  driving  separably  each  component 
part:  the  effect  of  an  explosion.  That  is  why  the 
Reformation  launched  the  whole  series  of  material 
advance,  but  launched  it  chaotically  and  on  diver- 
gent lines  which  would  only  end  in  disaster.  But 
the  thing  had  many  other  results. 

Thus,  we  next  notice  that  the  new  isolation  of 
the    soul   compelled   the   isolated    soul    to    strong 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  253 

vagaries.  The  soul  will  not  remain  in  the  void. 
If  you  blind  it,  it  will  grope.  If  it  cannot  grasp 
what  it  appreciates  by  every  sense,  it  will  grasp 
what  it  appreciates  by  only  one. 

On  this  account  in  the  dissolution  of  the  cor- 
porate sense  and  of  corporate  religion  you  had  suc- 
cessive idols  set  up,  worthy  and  unworthy,  none  of 
them  permanent.  The  highest  and  the  most  per- 
manent was  a  reaction  towards  corporate  life 
in  the  shape  of  a  worship  of  nationality — pa- 
triotism. 

You  had  at  one  end  of  the  scale  an  extraordinary 
new  tabus,  the  erection  in  one  place  of  a  sort  of 
maniac  god,  blood-thirsty,  an  object  of  terror.  In 
another  (or  the  same)  a  curious  new  ritual  ob- 
servance of  nothingness  upon  every  seventh  day. 
In  another  an  irrational  attachment  to  a  particular 
printed  book.  In  another  successive  conceptions: 
first,  that  the  human  reason  was  sufficient  for  the 
whole  foundations  of  human  life — that  there  w^ere 
no  mysteries:  next,  the  opposite  extravagance  that 
the  human  reason  had  no  authority  even  in  its  own 
sphere.  And  these  two,  though  contradictory,  had 
one  root.  The  rationalism  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury carried  on  through  the  materialism  of  the 
nineteenth,  the  irrational  doubts  of  Kant  (which 
included  much  emotional  rubbish)  carried  on  to 
the  sheer  chaos  of  the  later  metaphysicians,  with 
their  denial  of  contradictions,  and  even  of  being. 
Both  sprang  from  this  necessity  of  the  unsupported 
soul  to  make  itself  some  system  from  within:  as 


254  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

the  unsupported  soul,  in  an  evil  dream,  now  stifles 
in  strict  confinement  and  is  next  dissolved  in  some 
fearful  emptiness. 

All  this,  the  first  interior  effect  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, strong  in  proportion  to  the  strength  of  the 
reforming  movement,  powerful  in  the  regions  or 
sects  which  had  broken  away,  far  less  powerful 
in  those  which  had  maintained  the  Faith,  would 
seem  to  have  run  its  full  course,  and  to  have  set- 
tled at  last  into  universal  negation  and  a  universal 
challenge  proffered  to  every  institution,  and  every 
postulate.  But  since  humanity  cannot  repose  in 
such  a  stage  of  anarchy,  we  may  well  believe  that 
there  is  coming,  or  has  already  begun,  yet  another 
stage,  in  which  the  lack  of  corporate  support  for 
the  soul  will  breed  attempted  strange  religions: 
witchcrafts  and  necromancies. 

It  may  be  so.  It  may  be  that  the  great  debate 
will  come  up  for  final  settlement  before  such  novel 
diseases  spread  far.  At  any  rate,  for  the  moment 
we  are  clearly  in  a  stage  of  complete  negation. 
But  it  is  to  be  repeated  that  this  breaking  up  of 
the  foundations  differs  in  degree  with  varying  so- 
cieties, that  still  in  a  great  mass  of  Europe,  numer- 
ically the  half  perhaps,  the  necessary  anchors  of 
sanity  still  hold:  and  that  half  is  the  half  where 
directly  by  the  practice  of  the  Faith,  or  indirectly 
through  a  hold  upon  some  part  of  its  tradition,  the 
Catholic  Church  exercises  an  admitted  or  distant 
authority  over  the  minds  of  men. 

The  next  process  we  note  is — by  what  some  may 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  255 

think  a  paradox — also  due  to  the  isolation  of  the 
soul.  It  is  the  process  of  increasing  knowledge. 
Men  acting  in  a  fashion  highly  corporate  will  not 
so  readily  question,  nor  therefore  so  readily  exam- 
ine, as  will  men  acting  alone.  Men  whose  major 
results  are  taken  upon  an  accepted  philosophy, 
will  not  be  driven  by  such  a  need  of  inquiry  as 
those  who  have  abandoned  that  guide.  In  the 
moment,  more  than  a  thousand  years  ago,  when 
the  last  of  the  evangelizing  floodtide  was  still  run- 
ning strongly,  a  very  great  man  wrote  of  the  phys- 
ical sciences:  "Upon  such  toys  I  wasted  my  youth." 
And  another  wrote,  speaking  of  divine  knowledge : 
"All  the  rest  is  smoke." 

But  in  the  absences  of  faith,  demonstrable  things 
are  the  sole  consolation. 

There  are  three  forms  in  which  the  human 
mind  can  hold  the  truth:  The  form  of  Science, 
which  means  that  we  accept  a  thing  through  dem- 
onstration, and  therefore  cannot  admit  the  pos- 
sibility of  its  opposite.  The  form  of  Opinion, 
which  means  that  we  accept  a  thing  through 
probability,  that  is  through  a  partial,  but  not  com- 
plete demonstration,  and  therefore  we  do  not  deny 
the  possibility  of  the  opposite.  The  form  of  Faith, 
where  we  accept  the  thing  without  demonstration 
and  yet  deny  the  possibility  of  its  opposite,  as  for 
instance,  the  faith  of  all  men,  not  mad,  in  the 
existence  of  the  universe  about  them,  and  of  other 
human  minds. 

When  acknowledged  and  defined  Faith  departs. 


256  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

it  is  clear  that  of  the  remaining  two  rivals.  Opinion 
has  no  ground  against  Science.  That  which  can 
be  demonstrated  holds  all  the  field.  Indeed,  it  is 
the  mark  of  modern  insufficiency  that  it  can  con- 
ceive of  no  other  form  of  certitude  save  certitude 
through  demonstration,  and  therefore  does  not,  as 
a  rule,  appreciate  even  its  own  unproved  first  prin- 
ciples. 

Well,  this  function  of  the  isolated  soul,  inquiry 
and  the  necessity  for  demonstration  for  indi- 
vidual conviction  through  measurement  and  phys- 
ical fixed  knowledge,  has  occupied,  as  we  all  know, 
the  three  modern  centuries.  We  all  are  equally 
familiar  with  its  prodigious  results.  Not  one  of 
them  has,  as  yet,  added  to  human  happiness: 
not  one  but  has  been  increasingly  misused  to  the 
misery  of  man.  There  is  in  the  tragedy  something 
comic  also,  which  is  the  perpetual  puzzlement  of 
these  the  very  authors  of  discovery,  to  find  that, 
somehow  or  other,  discovery  alone  does  not  create 
joy,  and  that,  somehow  or  other,  a  great  knowl- 
edge can  be  used  ill,  as  anything  else  can  be  used 
ill.  Also  in  their  bewilderment,  many  turn  to  a 
yet  further  extension  of  physical  science  as  prom- 
ising, in  some  illogical  way,  relief. 

A  progression  in  physical  science  and  in  the  use 
of  instruments  is  so  natural  to  man  (so  long  as 
civic  order  is  preserved)  that  it  would,  indeed, 
have  taken  place,  not  so  rapidly,  but  as  surely, 
had  the  unity  of  Europe  been  preserved.  But  the 
destruction  of  that  unity  totally  accelerated  the 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  257 

pace  and  as  totally  threw  the  movement  off  its 
rails. 

The  Renaissance,  a  noble  and  vividly  European 
thing,  was  much  older  than  the  Reformation,  which 
was  its  perversion  and  corruption.  The  doors 
upon  modern  knowledge  had  been  opened  before 
the  soul,  which  was  to  enter  them,  had  been  cut 
off  from  its  fellows.  We  owe  the  miscarriage  of  all 
our  great  endeavor  in  this  field,  not  to  that  spring 
of  endeavor,  but  to  its  deflection.  It  is  a  blas- 
phemy to  deny  the  value  of  advancing  knowledge, 
and  at  once  a  cowardice  and  a  folly  to  fear  it  for 
its  supposed  consequences.  Its  consequences  are 
only  evil  through  an  evil  use,  that  is,  through  an 
evil  philosophy. 

In  connection  with  this  release  of  powerful  in- 
quiry through  the  isolation  of  the  soul,  you  have  an 
apparently  contradictory,  and  certainly  supple- 
mentary effect:  the  setting  up  of  unfounded  ex- 
ternal authority.  It  is  a  curious  development,  one 
very  little  recognized,  but  one  which  a  fixed  ob- 
servance of  the  modern  world  will  immediately 
reveal;  and  those  who  come  to  see  it  are  invariably 
astonished  at  the  magnitude  of  its  action.  Men — 
under  the  very  influence  of  skepticism — have 
come  to  accept  almost  any  printed  matter,  almost 
any  repeated  name,  as  an  authority  infallible  and 
to  be  admitted  without  question.  They  have  come 
to  regard  the  denial  of  such  authority  as  a  sort  of 
insanity,  or  rather  they  have  in  most  practical  af- 
fairs, come  to  be  divided  into  two  groups :  a  small 


258  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

number  of  men,  who  know  the  truth,  say,  upon 
a  political  matter  or  some  financial  arrangement, 
or  some  unsolved  problem;  and  a  vast  majority, 
which  accepts  without  question  an  always  incom- 
plete, a  usually  quite  false,  statement  of  the  thing 
because  it  has  been  repeated  in  the  daily  press 
and  vulgarized  in  a  hundred  books. 

This  singular  and  fantastic  result  of  the  long  di- 
vorce between  the  non-Catholic  mind  and  reason 
has  a  profound  effect  upon  the  modern  world. 
Indeed,  the  great  battle  about  to  be  engaged  be- 
tween chaos  and  order  will  turn  largely  upon  this 
form  of  suggestion,  this  acceptation  of  an  un- 
founded and  irrational  authority. 

Lastly,  there  is  of  the  major  consequences  of  the 
Reformation  that  phenomenon  which  we  have 
come  to  call  "Capitalism,"  and  which  many,  recog- 
nizing its  universal  evil,  wrongly  regard  as  the 
prime  obstacle  to  right  settlement  of  human  so- 
ciety and  to  the  solution  of  our  now  intolerable 
modern  strains. 

What  is  called  "Capitalism"  arose  directly  in  all 
its  branches  from  the  isolation  of  the  soul.  That 
isolation  permitted  an  unrestricted  competition. 
It  gave  to  superior  cunning  and  even  to  superior 
talent  an  unchecked  career.  It  gave  every  license 
to  greed.  And  on  the  other  side  it  broke  down  the 
corporate  bonds  whereby  men  maintain  themselves 
in  an  economic  stability.  Through  it  there  arose 
in  England  first,  later  throughout  the  more  active 
Protestant  nations,  and  later  still  in  various  de- 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  259 

grees  throughout  the  rest  of  Christendom,  a  system 
under  which  a  few  possessed  the  land  and  the 
machinery  of  production,  and  the  many  were  grad- 
ually dispossessed.  The  many  thus  dispossessed 
could  only  exist  upon  doles  meted  out  by  the  pos- 
sessors, nor  was  human  life  a  care  to  these.  The 
possessors  also  mastered  the  state  and  all  its 
organs — hence  the  great  National  Debts  which  ac- 
companied the  system:  hence  even  the  financial 
hold  of  distant  and  alieij^men  upon  subject  prov- 
inces of  economic  effort:  hence  the  draining  of 
wealth  not  only  from  increasingly  dissatisfied  sub- 
jects over-seas,  but  from  the  individual  producers 
of  foreign  independent  states. 

[The  true  conception  of  property  disappears 
under  such  an  arrangement,  and  you  naturally  get 
a  demand  for  relief  through  the  denial  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  ownership  altogether.  Here  again,  as  in 
the  matter  of  the  irrational  tabus  and  of  skepti- 
cism, two  apparently  contradictory  things  have 
one  root :  Capitalism,  and  the  ideal  inhuman  system 
(not  realizable)  called  Socialism,  both  spring  from 
one  type  of  mind  and  both  apply  to  one  kind  of 
diseased  society. 

Against  both,  the  pillar  of  reaction  is  peasant 
society,  and  peasant  society  has  proved  through- 
out Europe  largely  coordinate  with  the  remaining 
authority  of  the  Catholic  Church.  For  a  peasant 
society  does  not  mean  a  society  composed  of  peas- 
ants, but  one  in  which  modern  Industrial  Capital- 
ism yields  to  agriculture,  and  in  which  agriculture 


260  EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH 

is,  in  the  main,  conducted  by  men  possessed  in 
part  or  altogether  of  their  instruments  of  produc- 
tion and  of  the  soil,  either  through  ownership  or 
customary  tenure.  In  such  a  society  all  the  insti- 
tutions of  the  state  repose  upon  an  underlying 
conception  of  secure  and  well-divided  private  prop- 
erty which  can  never  be  questioned  and  which 
colors  all  men's  minds.  And  that  doctrine,  like 
every  other  sane  doctrine,  though  applicable  only 
to  temporal  conditions,  has  the  firm  support  of  the 
Catholic  Church. 


So  things  have  gone.  We  have  reached  at  last, 
as  the  final  result  of  that  catastrophe  three  hun- 
dred years  ago,  a  state  of  society  which  cannot  en- 
dure and  a  dissolution  of  standards,  a  melting  of 
the  spiritual  framework,  such  that  the  body  politic 
fails.  Men  everywhere  feel  that  an  attempt  to 
continue  down  this  endless  and  ever  darkening 
road  is  like  the  piling  up  of  debt.  We  go  further 
and  further  from  a  settlement.  Our  various  forms 
of  knowledge  diverge  more  and  more.;  Authority, 
the  very  principle  of  life,  loses  its  meaning,  and 
this  awful  edifice  of  civilization  which  we  have 
inherited,  and  which  is  still  our  trust,  trembles 
and  threatens  to  crash  down.  It  is  clearly  inse- 
cure. It  may  fall  in  any  moment.  We  who  still 
live  may  see  the  ruin.  But  ruin  when  it  comes  is 
not  only  a  sudden,  it  is  also  a  final,  thing. 

In  such  a  crux  there  remains  the  historical 
truth:    that   this   our   European   structure,   built 


EUROPE  AND  THE  FAITH  261 

upon  the  noble  foundations  of  classical  antiquity, 
was  formed  through,  exists  by,  is  consonant  to, 
and  will  stand  only  in  the  mold  of,  the  Catholic 
Church. 

Europe  will  return  to  the  Faith,  or  she  will 
perish. 

The  Faith  is  Europe.    And  Europe  is  the  Faith.  ) 


y 


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